Are you sure you want to be "free"? Freedom is such a strange concept. I've never understood it in the context of personal decision-making. Americans claim to love "freedom," but how much freedom can you stand? Freedom implies occurrences that are unhinged from naturalistic laws. Freedom implies a mechanism that…
E.g., Don’t hold your breath that the Democrats will save us. Or that anyone will.  It might take something far more dramatic. Perhaps something revolutionary. But it's going to require far more than sitting around watching our TV's to make it happen. Marty Kaplan is a really smart media-reform and political-reform…
"What an odd question?" was my first thought when I read this column. Blogging, as a profession, has grown from geeky obscurity into a direct challenge to the journalism industry, even with bloggers' reputation for being unruly, unvetted, grammatically and syntactically insufficient, and above all, a disorganized mess. He discusses…
Poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. who won a National Book Critics Circle Award and who is professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush. Here's her letter…
I find it ironic that so many conservatives who deplore extended dependence on government welfare (because it destroys the soul) embrace non-ending handouts "from heaven."  In his 2005 article in The National Review, "Welfare Reform Part II," Stephen Moore wrote that it was time to start chopping welfare programs again. …