In good time for consideration of President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the May 25 issue of The New Yorker magazine offers a detailed report on John Roberts, the Chief Justice appointed by George W. Bush. The article is written by staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, author of “The Nine: Inside the [...]

As a former reporter and journalism professor I am naturally inclined to think highly of the right of free speech. Still, I can’t help applauding what the British government did when it slammed the door on Michael Savage and his ilk. Savage is an American radio host who spouts some of the ugliest and most [...]

“Each country has its own quirks,” President Obama noted at his London news conference last week. He was trying to show a tolerance for the differences between foreign cultures and our own. But as the news media around the world report events here in the United States, other people have learned that one particular American [...]

Poor President Obama. All he did was laugh a couple of times during his Sixty-Minutes interview, and he was pummeled by media critics. How DARE the man even smile in the thick of the crises encircling him? He did explain that his laughter reflected a kind of “gallows humor,” a necessary relief from the burdens [...]

Crikey! Who are the dunderheads who shaped the lead editorial in the March 18 Washington Post? Pack them off to the woodshed. With growing outrage across the country, in Congress and the White House, over the obscene bonuses given to top dogs at AIG, the Post writers complain about the complainers. They are called “demagogic [...]

True confessions up front: I have a soft spot for Scandinavia. It began when I spent a post-college summer studying at the University of Oslo. Later I married an Australian whose father was a Norwegian sea captain. We have lots of relatives living in Norway who keep me informed about what’s going on there. I’ve [...]

It was just a small item in The Washington Post: California’s Republican Party voted to deny party funds for the 2010 election to six GOP lawmakers who broke ranks with the party to support a tax increase. The increase was desperately needed to pass a state budget facing a $42 billion shortfall. The party’s decision [...]

No wonder President Obama is showing signs of frustration. He’s tried everything – kindness, cookies, sweet reason – and the Republicans, the ones who lost the last election, refuse to play the game. They refuse even to acknowledge that the game, courtesy of a majority of the voters and the economic crisis, has changed at [...]

Fred Hiatt, editor of the Washington Post editorial page, is making a big mistake. He’s hiring Willliam Kristol, who has just “by mutual agreement” parted from The New York Times, to write for the Post. The goal, according to Hiatt, is for the page to deliver “a diverse range of opinions,” a perfectly proper intention. [...]

Barely two days after Barack Obama is sworn in as President, the naysayers are turning out in force. Two of the angriest have landed on the Op-Ed page of The Washington Post. Former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich is deeply disturbed by Obama’s suggestion that “The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” [...]