Justice Department Decision to Forgo Tribunal Bypasses Pentagon. Top Pentagon officials said today that they were not consulted by Attorney General John Ashcroft in his decision to go to federal court rather than seek a military tribunal to try Zacarias Massaoui…; Sometimes fear steps decisively in our path and causes a kind of civil war. [...]

One thing about getting older, you live in Yogi Berra’s “déjà vu all over again.” When people were running around after 9/11 holding their heads and moaning that “nothing will be the same” my reaction was “wrong,” it’s never different. Don’t get me wrong too. It wasn’t that I was untouched. I never see or [...]

Nuclear Experts in Pakistan May have Links to Al Qaeda. The United States is investigating new intelligence reports of contact between Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists and the Taliban or the terrorist network al Qaeda…; The story about nuclear weapons, Al Qaeda and Pakistan takes me directly back to memories of Hiroshima. There are times I [...]

Boomers, Not Looking Ahead. Many baby boomers worry about having to depend on other people to care for them in their old age. Yet most boomers have done little to prepare for that possibility, a recent survey suggests; This quote about the baby boomers made me think of lessons learned from the 30s. I learned [...]

I’ve just finished reading Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. Depressing but the excellent scholarship makes it riveting, especially to those of us who mourn the passing of things we treasured growing up in the thirties and forties; general knowledge about what (and where) things were actually going on in the world, appreciation for [...]