The Sanctity of Human Life Act is back. In a new year only 3 days old at the time, Rep. Paul Ryan, fresh from seeing his chances at VP aborted, wasted no time trying to breathe life back into the Sanctity of Human Life Act. As reported by Laura Beck at Jezebel: But now it’s […]
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AIG: Today it’s “Thank you, America.” Will it be “Screw you, America” tomorrow?
This just in from NYT’s DealBook: Rescued by a Bailout, A.I.G. May Sue Its Savior The board of A.I.G. will meet on Wednesday to consider joining a $25 billion shareholder lawsuit against the government, court records show. The lawsuit does not argue that government help was not needed. It contends that the onerous nature of […]
Update: Milford, DE’s new twist on “whites only” – Signs are gone
UPDATE ‘Threatening’ signs removed at schools The good news is that the signs have been removed. As it turns out, plausible deniability may mean this was actually an innocent mistake: The only reason she [Dr. Phyllis Kohel, Milford School District Superintendent] can think of is that someone duplicated the signs that are posted at the […]
Is $6 billion in political spending a big deal?
Is $6 billion a lot of money? Depends. To Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, perhaps not so much. To me and 99.99 percent of Americans, yeah, it’s a lot of money. But, like much in life, the assignment of value often lies in placing context around any piece of data. So what context should embrace […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions and Histories
Final part of a series “[H]istory and historical fiction,” says historian Paul Ashdown, “are alternate ways of telling stories about the past.” In that context, Ulysses S. Grant spoke more truth than he realized when he said “Wars produce many stories of fiction.” Aside from yarn-spun anecdotes about apple-tree surrenders and lemon-sucking generals, war also produces “stories […]
Raw materials: how often are guns used in self defense?
One challenge of stepping hip-deep into an issue about which one wishes to be as objective as possible is that of not believing one’s own PR. I might like cliches, but I hate drinking the Kool-Aid, even my own special brew. To that end, fact-checking is indispensable. As a starting reference, I’ll be using the […]
Gun control advocacy: let’s talk about blood on hands, shall we?
Just three days before Christmas, The Journal News, a Gannett company, decided that there might not be enough red in our holidays. Map: Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood? The map indicates the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. Each dot represents an individual permit holder licensed to […]
The NRA proposals trigger the Gun Event Horizon
The NRA’s press conference and suggestions were somewhat astonishing: Don’t regulate guns, regulate video games. Don’t blame gun-owners, create a database of all the mentally disabled/ill and track them. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” which boggles the mind. Congress should authorise armed […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Fictions told until they are believed to be true
Part eight in a series “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Ulysses S. Grant said in his Personal Memoirs. Grant was specifically referring to a fiction “based on a slight foundation of fact” from Appomattox Court House, where Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered. The formal surrender […]
When (and why) should an energy subsidy end?
A German-made 900kWh PowerWind56 wind turbine dominates the summit of Mount Institute in Hawley, Mass. It provides, says a ski industry website, 100 percent of the electricity needs of Berkshire East. That’s the ski area, formerly known as Thunder Mountain, at which I learned to ski. From the valley floor, the brilliant white blades seem […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Communicating “the incommunicable experience of war”
Part seven in a series “We have shared the incommunicable experience of war,” Oliver Wendell Holmes says at the beginning of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War. Burns could not have picked a more appropriate quote to start his film with, not just because it set a particular tone for the entire eleven-hour documentary but because it […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: The Civil War’s great storyteller
Part six in a series. No written work embodies the tension between art and history more fully than Shelby Foote’s mammoth three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. Few people realize Foote was a novelist before he became the “warm and folksy raconteur” of anecdotal Civil War history; his novel Shiloh sits almost forgotten in the shadow of his magnum […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Killer Angels, real and fictional
Part five in a series. In my last post, I began to discuss Michael Shaara’s aesthetic choices for constructing The Killer Angels as he did, and how he adopted a Lost Cause-interpretation of Robert E. Lee as a central choice for his novel. Where Shaara deviates significantly from Lost Cause tradition, though, is his choice to make Confederate […]
Is Paul Ryan a “Global Thinker?”
This explains so much. Foreign Policy magazine, that impressive and deep-looking tome that stands out on magazine stands because it looks, well, really serious, has published a list of the most important “Global Thinkers” in the world today. Since I’m not a regular reader, I don’t know if this is an annual list, like the […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: Gods & Jacksons
Part four in a series. One of my favorite places to work at Fredericksburg & Spostylvania National Military Park is the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, the small plantation office building where the Confederate general died. It’s a story I love so much that I wrote a book about it, The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson. But no book […]
Telling History vs. Making Art: “Frankly, my dear….”
Part three in a series As the horn section carries Max Steiner’s score from its overture into the sweeping, now-iconic strings of its main theme, Gone With the Wind opens with haggard-looking slaves returning from a hard day’s work set against the first of many sunset backdrops. On-screen text immediately evokes a romanticized antebellum past: There was a […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- The time a source has to respond to request for comment? Virtually none.
- Profiling the Tea Party: In defense of the IRS. Sorta. Or not.
- Saturday Video Roundup: “Imagine the Band,” by John Lennon and Wings
- The Rest is Noise (6)—Descent into the Maelstrom
- I hate handguns, but I have still considered owning one
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
- Pelosi on Bush: “He’s not worth impeaching”
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happyappalachy: "Scooping" is not that big of a deal if you can't …
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Samuel Smith: Much of what Frank was responding to, at least ini…
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Otherwise: I do think Frank is responding to the post and he'…
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Delilah: My perception of the reporter's world has morphed …
