Someone is going to have to explain to me the rage of the commentariat and the McCain campaign’s rhetoric about Georgia. Will they please tell me how the American invasion of Iraq is different from the Russian invasion of Georgia? Both invaded countries are small and powerless against a giant. Both invasions violate the boundaries [...]

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“Speak Softly,” said President Roosevelt (T), “and carry a big stick.” Sounds like good strategy for a country ready to take on the whole world. Yet for much of its history this country has been just the opposite. Many Americans believe the military power of the country is absolute and the leaders of the country [...]

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“All the Olympics are a little unnatural, of course, they are genial intervals of make-believe,” writes Charles McGrath, the Irish-American litterateur in residence at the New York Times, “when the world pretends to be a happier and friendlier place.” McGrath understates the case. They are as phony as a two-headed yuan. They are the last [...]

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The typical article written about Chicago politics by a journalist from somewhere else tells us as much about this city as does the too-long-by-an-hour “Dark Knight.” You come into the city, talk to some of the approved journalists and political outsiders (the so-called independents), clip stories from newspaper archives, and begin to write. Thus American [...]

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