Newt. Again. (MATT BAI, 3/01/09, NY Times Magazine) Is the Republican future going to continue to rely on country-club denizens and the rural bloc, or should it aim more for working-class Catholics or recent immigrants? Can a party trying to expand its coalition afford to make fundamentalist religio...

Top Democrats cross Obama on earmarks (S.A. Miller and David R. Sands, March 4, 2009, Washington Times) House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer became the second leading congressional Democrat in a week to push back against Mr. Obama's drive to curb member-directed earmarks on spending bills. Saying he...

The popular choice for Pac-10 men's basketball Coach of the Year? Oregon State's Craig Robinson, who took the worst program in America and completely turned it around. Change we can believe in. As Chris Dufresne of the LA Times points out, Robinson took a team that was 0-18 in conference last season...

Over the weekend I got a chance to pop over to Alex White’s Motorcycle Performance Services shop in LA and take a peek at the beginning of the 999 rebuild. I say ‘the beginning’, because it was my first time seeing the Duc up on the work bench, but in truth Alex and his crew have b...

Forget change: GOP eyes retro strategy (JEANNE CUMMINGS, 2/23/09, Politico) [S]ome Republicans believe President Barack Obama’s one-two push on the economy and health care reform is setting the stage for a new round of significant gains, if not a total takeover. “There are two models that Republ...

MUMBAI: A nauseating smell emanates from the rubble and strewn furniture as Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg and his wife Frieda rummage through the belongings of their dead son Gavriel who ran Chabad House in south Mumbai. The house was the city headquarters of the ultra orthodox Hasidic Jews. The couple an...

Mumbai terror attack Mumbai: The parents of the late Rabbi Gavriel, who was killed during the November 26 terror attacks here last year, have announced plans to raise Rs100 million to reconstruct the ravaged Jewish centre in south Mumbai. Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, accompanied by his wife Frieda, and ...

"Well, I think you look great. Really great. Your reflexes are normal now and all of your strength tests are normal. You don't have the plantarflexion weakness you had a few months ago. At this point, I don't think we need to set a follow up but if something changes, just call me and come in," said ...

I realised today that I'm doing too much. There are so many great writing-related projects that I'm involved in that it's easy to get caught up in wanting to make things better and bigger, especially when there is a community there. I know what my priorities are and I need to keep plugging away at e...

I've been struggling with illness this week and a severe lack of energy that has left me watching a lot of True Blood and Supernatural episodes. The impact on revising Rebuilding Retehoro has been regretful yet unavoidable. I would only have been torturing myself further if I had tried more than the...