Pictured above is my wife’s Uncle Charlie landing on Utah Beach 77 years ago. He is the soldier in the right foreground. He made it off the beach and fought across France and into Germany before the war in Europe…
Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign brought me to Washington, beginning a 40-plus year career in public policy. While attending Stanford Law School, I worked as a research assistant at the Hoover Institution and met Martin Anderson, Reagan’s domestic policy adviser….
Bonaparte or Napoleon? Revolutionary general carrying the banner of liberal humanism across Europe? Tyrannical emperor imposing arrogant domination? Or epic hero bearing glory of universal appeal? The French, to the degree they pay any heed at all to the reluctant…
I lost my first friend during my early 20s while I was in school. He was a youngish, politically active professor at a community college I attended while living in Florida’s panhandle. It was an interesting time: the state was…
I always enjoyed Norwegian class, but that day it was especially pleasurable. It was spring — the date was April 10 — and it was unusually warm, and after class a bunch of us went out for a drink and…
The boxing world is saddened to learn of the too-early death of former middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Hagler’s wife, Kay, announced that the champ died unexpectedly Saturday in their home in New Hampshire. He was 66. No cause of…
Tom Bethell was an editor’s dream. He owned the patent on clean, engaging, delightful copy. Tom, British-born and educated, became our Washington correspondent in 1976, writing the Capitol Ideas column for the next four decades or so, never missing an…
Versatile British character actor Ronald Pickup has died. He was 80. His agent said Pickup died peacefully Wednesday after a long illness with his family and wife of 56 years, Lans Traverse, on hand. No cause of death was given….
On February 14, 2021, the world quietly lost one of the most intriguing, enduring figures of the Cold War. He was Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet Bloc official ever to defect to the United States. Throughout the…
