Monthly Archives: February 2006

All Politics Is Local

It’s winter in Vermont, although it’s been in the 40’s for most of the season, there’s no snow on the ground and my neighbor, Tom, is moping about the house. He has a new collapsible ice shanty, auger and tip-ups sitting in his basement unused, because the ice on Lake Champlain (what there is [...]

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Salon magazine published another round of photos from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal that broke in the spring of 2004. One photo is of the body of Manadel al-Jamadi. One eye is open, fixed and glassy; the other purple and swollen shut. A bloody bandage rests on the side of his face. [...]

Catastrophic Gradualism

I was browsing in a second-hand bookstore recently, brooding as I browsed on the current state of society. My eye fell on a volume of essays by George Orwell titled, “In Front of Your Nose.” It seemed liked such a deliberate response to my thoughts that I bought it.
In an October 1945 essay [...]

Time of Our Choosing

Three years ago Sunday, Colin Powell made his famous appearance before the UN Security Council. Mr. Powell still maintains he did not lie that day, because he did not know that what he was saying was untrue, but it was untrue just the same.
While Mr. Powell was destroying his reputation in New York, the [...]