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This summer, on eight successive Tuesday evenings, I am presenting a series of films under the rubric of “Crime and Punishment” at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. (go to www.eppc.org/movies for details or to register to attend). The fifth film in the series, Touch of Evil by Orson Welles, was screened yesterday…

Here’s President Obama’s history of the Cold War, as told to a group of students at Moscow University, according to Liz Cheney in today’s Wall Street Journal:  The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in…

Venomous attacks in The New York Times on the woman whom that paper’s frightfully witty op ed columnist Maureen Dowd so wittily calls “Caribou Barbie” are of course no surprise, but at least hitherto they have more or less stuck to criticism of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s actual words and deeds. By “criticism,” it will be…

This summer, on eight successive Tuesday evenings, I am presenting a series of films under the rubric of “Crime and Punishment” at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. (go to www.eppc.org/movies for details or to register to attend). The fourth film in the series, A Place in the Sun (1946) by George Stevens,…

There are only two subjects on the Washington Post op ed page today: Robert S. McNamara and Sarah Palin. And the difference in the treatment they get from the Post, as from the rest of the media, ought to tell us something. Governor Palin, of course, hasn’t died, as former Secretary McNamara has, but she…

I can’t resist the urge to gloat just a little. As I pointed out in my book Honor, A History (have I mentioned this before?), it was the American unfamiliarity with the honor culture of the Middle East which led to the fuss about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction — something that the left continues to…

This summer, on eight successive Tuesday evenings, I am presenting a series of films under the rubric of “Crime and Punishment” at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. (go to www.eppc.org/movies for details or to register to attend). The third film in the series, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) by Tay Garnett,…

As a student of the media and, therefore, an inveterate scandalologist, I am fascinated by the new direction which the Mark Sanford scandal has taken. Normally, the media’s salivation at any hint of hidden salaciousness is as reliable as that of Pavlov’s dogs, so it was hardly surprising that the initial reaction to Governor Sanford’s…