Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes people inhabit. --George Orwell Quite by chance (no, really), I saw an old classic that had been languishing in…
Did you see Rick Santorum today? Did you hear him yesterday? A year ago? A decade ago? Look: I've had little to say about this recent (very manufactured, very cynical)…
Did you know Reagan and Dickens almost share the same birthday? I didn't. One day apart: Dickens --and his readers-- celebrate his 200th birthday this week. Reagan --and his disciples--…
Anyone who happened to miss this piece by Lakhdar Boumediene, entitled My Guantánamo Nightmare should check it out, here. Here is a taste of the sickening, yet predictable torment this…
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” –Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963) *This should be…
As obstreperously opposed to the death penalty as I remain, it is nevertheless difficult to feel uncomplicated emotions regarding the execution of John Allen Muhammad. I --and any individual living…
Voices In Our Heads You talking to me? It is the pivotal scene in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and it remains one of the seminal moments in movie history. Not so…
From Andrew Sullivan's invaluable blog (TheDailyDish), comes the following (quoted from Roger Cohen's typically sane and salient perspective--this one, here is must reading--via The New York Times): Of the 770…
This representative quote has been reprinted many times elsewhere, with good reason, so I have no qualms utilizing it here: Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the…
The best way to compliment a writer, as a reader, is to recommend their work to others. That I wholeheartedly do --and have done. The best way to compliment a…
Sean Murphy