Today’s Topic: In semi-praise of Down by the River. Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: As we have ruled earlier, there are few good books. Down by the River by Charles Bowden, a meandering and disorganized collection of facts, soundbites and…

If you’ve lived in Russia, you know that just before anyone big gets charged with corruption or other high crimes, they always have a way of suffering conveniently-timed heart attacks and winding up in the hospital before the heat arrives…

Today’s calendar girl collection, newly minted for 2009, comes courtesy of Kerch Yard, a Ukrainian shipyard in the Eastern Crimean town of Kerch. According to our sources, “kerch” comes from an Old East Slavic word for “throat,” and the town’s…

I’ll talk about Gaza tomorrow, but I’ve got the day off and it’s not my idea of a good time. For now I’ll just say it turned out exactly like I said it would, but blecch, it’s not my idea…

Maureen Dowd: queen of snark? The burning issue in David Denby’s new book, Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation, is that these days we’re all too snarky, and it’s imperiling Western Civilization. First, of course, he…

Has anyone noticed the ugly reality captured in the so-called “Miracle on the Hudson”? One of the first photos shows that first class passengers were offered first-class rafts to ensure that they’d survive in comfort, while the economy class passengers…

The real mystery of our age is this: why do all the media warmongers still have jobs, after the way they goaded us into the epic disaster we’ve found ourselves in? Back in 2001, when a panicked America foolishly handed…