It started with lesbian couples in Vermont in the mid-90s, freaked out they’d lose their babies. Vermont Freedom to Marry was born, and is now the most powerful Democratic organization in the state, most certainly responsible for the victory of Gov. Peter Shumlin, elected in Nov 2010 and, nine months later, the first sitting governor [...]
Chen Guangchen, the Chinese human rights activist, got four separate articles in the New York Times for May 5. Jane Perlez and Michael Wines reported from Beijing on the deal that would get Chen and his family visas to the US, for him to take up a fellowship at NYU. Andrew Jacobs weighed in with [...]
On April 20 there’s a memorial for Christopher Hitchens at the Cooper Union in Manhattan. There’s a PEN tribute, also in Manhattan, on April 30. Here’s my own little envoi. The regular Diary, tumbrils and all, will resume next week. SCENE ONE Antechamber to Heaven, a large reception room in the Baroque style. A door [...]
This has been a bad year for grand restaurants in the three- to four-star range and the clang of their closing doors raises the question — is the whole gastro-frenzy that stirred into life in the mid-1970s finally lurching towards closure? Goodbye Iron Chefs, sayonara “molecular gastronomy” in the style of Ferran Adria, farewell those [...]
Mitt Romney will be the Republican to face President Obama in the fall. Tuesday night was the clincher, as the Mormon zealot won in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington DC. He may stumble on, but the Catholic zealot Rick Santorum is finished. It’s hard to detect any alluring feature in Romney’s psychic or political make-up, and [...]
The Mississippi Supreme Court has upheld two-term Republican Gov. Haley Barbour’s pardons. This quintessential southern good old boy issued 203 of them in January on his last day in office, a hefty total for Mississippi. Barbour’s predecessor, Ronnie Musgrove, issued just one, to a fellow in the joint for a marijuana bust. Under fierce attack, [...]
Suddenly the right has gone truly crazy. It must be sunspots. We’re three years into sunspot cycle number 24 and it crests in activity with 59 sunspots in early 2013, the weakest sunspot cycle in a hundred years, therefore not much help in the earth’s current cooling phase, during which — contrary to warmist doctrine [...]
Surely Rick Santorum is the most fanatical Christian to run for the Republican nomination in the modern era, maybe any era. Next to him Pat Robertson, billionaire founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, who ran for the nomination in 1988, has the tolerant, glassy-eyed bonhomie of the late Dean Martin. Robertson has always been in [...]
Few spectacles have been more surreal than senior US officials — starting with the President, the Secretary of State and the US ambassador to the UN — solemnly lecturing Assad and his beleaguered Syrian government on the need to accommodate rebel forces whose GCC sponsors are intent on slaughtering the ruling Alawite minority or driving [...]
The day after the Florida primary, when all eyes were fixed in astonishment on the victorious Gov. Romney expressing his indifference to the sufferings of the poor, the Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, gave a speech in Brussels. He said that as early as mid-2013 American forces in Afghanistan will step back from a combat role. [...]
