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One thing you notice more and more the longer you hang around this sleazy world is the way mainstream types can’t admit to the obvious. They always have to act shocked. So it’s like, “Bond Mogul Convicted of Fraud”-oh, the…

When the fourth of July rolls around, you’re supposed to think of, I don’t know, the Constitution and backyard cookouts like in old Chevy ads—but for me, it’s really Gettysburg we’re celebrating. Greatest battle in American history.

Summer Reading: Banquo’s Ghosts, by Richard Lowry and Keith Korman, Vanguard Press (2009), 352 pages. You have to feel a little sorry for the two neocons who co-wrote Banquo’s Ghosts. The idea seems simple enough: a Tom Clancy-style thriller about a…

It took me a while to figure out why everybody was nagging me to do a column on the Iranian elections. Everybody seemed to think it was all mysterious and world-shaking. Finally I realized, you’re all het up because every…

Kandy Man with long name who fought the Brits. Key fact: in Sri Lanka heroes were allowed to get fat, another reason to like the place. You see some pretty sick stuff when you do my job, but I just…

Cheech Marin moonlighting as the leader of the Tamil Tigers? I have to say “Thank you, God of War,” because we just saw a decisive victory in a war, for once. I never thought I’d live to see the day….

Velupillai Prabhakaran: LTTE’s Guerrilla Generalissimo One thing you have to give the doomed Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka credit for: their supporters sitting in comfortable first-world cities have no shame when it comes to begging for help. Militarily the Sri…