I’ve reading about Italy and the Papacy during the Renaissance lately and can’t help but be struck by the similarities to today’s Washington, D.C. The Renaissance Church and its world were a place where everybody was leveling charges of heresy…
On Wednesday, the New York Times published a very nice account of a speech President Vladimir Putin gave to a group of the Russian elite in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Reported by on-the-scene correspondents, it was free of the usual…
Americans have always assumed that there was a “one-for-all-and-all-for-one” aspect to our country, but watching Karen Moreau’s “The Empire State Divide,” it’s hard to argue that we haven’t become bitterly divided along class lines. Moreau is the daughter of an…
This week Americans honor National Marriage Week, coinciding with Valentine’s Day, the international holiday for lovers. There’ll be lots to celebrate — romance, fidelity, tying the knot and the lifelong commitment that marriage entails. This year it might also be…
Paul Lieberman is a feature writer who spent 24 years covering a variety of beats at the Los Angeles Times. He has won a fistful of awards plus a Nieman Fellowship and was on two reporting teams that were awarded…
Brandon had always felt somewhat envious of his sister. This was strange because he was the natural child and she was adopted. And she was a girl while he was a boy. It seemed as if he should have a…
Do you know anything about Ju-Jitsu? It’s the martial art developed by Japanese Samurai to aid a lone warrior without his weapon confronting an armed opponent. When such direct combat seems suicidal, the technique becomes to use your opponent’s own…
There’s one tax benefit for the rich that I can’t see why anyone would possibly want to defend. That’s the deduction of state and local taxes on your federal income tax. This is a racket perpetrated by the bluest of…
The Washington, D.C. that encountered the nation’s Second Pearl Harbor would have been unrecognizable to anyone who had known it fifty years before. The White House, the Capitol, the Washington Mall now stood as a narrow historic corridor amid a…
I know most people would like to forget about the election, but as someone who supported Mitt Romney throughout the primary campaign — taking a lot of flak from Spectator readers in the process — I would like to defend…