A certain person I know got a big packet, maybe 300 pages or more, from AdvantraRx, a Medicare Part D insurer, the other day. Most of the news was on one page. It said the monthly fee was going up by 68.98 percent in 2010. It didn’t say it in so many words; we had [...]

In financial reporting as in other areas, news organizations too often lose sight of the issues and focus on politics, or diversions that pass for politics. With some exceptions, that’s what has happened in covering the economic collapse. Thus, citizens and voters are consistently left with little sense of their own interests, or the country’s. [...]

The Progressive magazine’s 100th-anniversary issue, published in April, consists mainly of excerpts from issues in each year since 1909. The entry for January 1917 – nearly 93 years ago – expands the much-disputed definition of “American Exceptionalism.” It begins: “At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation [...]

During Watergate William Safire, then working for President Nixon, told the Washington Post’s editorial page editor that Nixon could handle all the attacks on himself but that the Post was hitting below the belt when it tied his appointments secretary, Dwight Chapin, to aspects of the scandal. Chapin was like a son to Nixon, Safire [...]