This week, like most weeks, “On the Media” got letters accusing us of bias against the Bush Administration. And, as also often enough takes place, the accusation triggered some heated exchanges on our Web site’s comments section. Usually, I don’t intervene, but this time I weighed in, too – responding most especially to the charge [...]

Wow. You just never expect this. You never expect to pick up the phone to discover you’ve won a MacArthur Fellows program “genius” grant. But sure enough, this morning my cell rings and a voice informs me that my (admittedly esoteric) research in applying nanotechnology to Pez dispensers has been recognized to the tune of [...]

If you forced me to quantify, yeah, the biggest reason I despise the Bush Administration is for its systematic dismantling of the Constitution. Then I guess it’s the war — equally the lies behind it and the outrages at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, which have robbed me of the special righteousness I still clung to [...]