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Posts published in “Essays”

Tipping in America

Tip-skimming has surfaced in Boston, and there can’t be a tipper in America who, on hearing the news, doesn’t exclaim, “The greedy bastards!” In a lawsuit filed March 7 in Suffolk Superior Court, five former…

Let’s Play 162

So, why is baseball wonderful? Certainly, not because George Will and George W. pretend to be fans. Not on account of any of the hackneyed reasons (absence of time-clock; actual strategy and thinking involved). Sure,…

Marin County and the Permissive Society

Like John Walker Lindh I grew up in posh, left-leaning Marin County and joined an authoritarian cult that methodically killed thousands of my fellow Americans. It was 1973 and after years of exposure to permissive…

Red Desert

Wilderness is something you fight for, so said Bob Marshall, a founder (1935) of the Wilderness Society. How's the fight going? How are we doing? From Wilderness Watch, a recent mailing: “…those of us who've…

Conspiracies

With so many conspiracy theories floating around, along with facts and verifiable evidence, to speak of another conspiracy is to tumble into the land of the crazed. Is this the era of postmodern political science…

When Billy Graham Planned To Kill One Million People

There’s a piquant contrast in the press coverage across the decades of Billy Graham’s various private dealings with Nixon, as displayed on the tapes gradually released from the National Archive or disclosed from Nixon’s papers.…

The Mad King Crank

Once upon a time, in the richest kingdom on earth there was born, a girl child. Even though she was given everything an earthly child could want, good food in abundance, whatever clothing, shoes or…

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