Don't know what to make of the news that membership in organized religions is down in all fifty states. That's not quite true.  I've been trying not to let myself make anything of it.  For one thing, I'd just be talking out of my hat.  I don't know enough.  None of the articles I...

I'm sure President Obama's plans to improve education by coming down hard on teachers is giving plenty of residents of the Village a case of the warm fuzzies.  I don't know why but among our elites the teachers union is a more corrupting influence on the nation than the Teamsters were back when...

Updated. Has it even been established that the guy who took Michelle Obama's picture with his cell phone camera when she was serving lunch at Miriam's Kitchen was homeless or there for the free meal? Jesse Taylor and Alex Koppleman, among others, have explained to the self-righteously indignant why ...

Hilzoy's right, we'd all be better off if these Right Wing bloggers and their commenters and writers of letters to the editors threatening to go Galt and make like the hero of Ayn Rand's fairy tale about a corporate fascist utopia lost, Atlas Shruggred, and take their wealth and job creating energie...

Part One is here. "What we do get in life and miss so often in literature is the sentence sounds  that underlie the words.  Words in themselves do not convey meaning, and to [prove] this, which may seem entirely unreasonable to any one who does not understand the psychology of sound, let u...

That's the title the Mystery Writers of America's new anthology of short stories about drama, murder, mayhem, and other shennanigans in the Court.  It's edited by Linda Fairstein and includes a story by one of my Facebook friends, Joel Goldman.  From the Publishers Weekly starred review: B...

Memory is a tricky thing and I can understand how three and a half years later Bobby Jindal might "remember" being in room while the sheriff was on the phone yelling about how the bureaucrats were getting in the way of helping people in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. What doesn't make sens...

Updated throughout the day as questions pour in. I'm having some trouble concentrating on the blog this week.  Typepad, ever helpful, has some tips for bloggers running short on inspiration.  One of the tips is "Invite your readers to ask you a question." Ok.  Consider yourself invite...

No way Steve Martin's Inspector Clouseau survives against your memories of Peter Sellers'.  But that's because you're remembering Sellars in the original Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark and The Return of the Pink Panther.  Watch The Pink Panther Strikes Again and Revenge of the Pink Pa...

You gotta love the way the mayor of Lansing shouts this smug, fat-faced Fox Stooge down. The New York Post editorial the stooge quotes is based on several lies, the main one being that autoworkers actually take home seventy dollars an hour.  That figure, long ago exposed as a con, includes the ...