Alan Greenspan surprised a lot of people when he wrote in his recently-published book that “the Iraq war is largely about oil.” A surprise because candor in high places on that subject usually is in short supply. Weapons of mass destruction? Of course. Regime change? Sure. Spread democracy? Ditto. Oil? Never or almost never by [...]

Talk about stale news! The substance of the story on the Oct.1 front page of the New York Times business section about shunning unwanted readers, “Why Big Newspapers Applaud Some Declines in Circulation,” has been kicking around, in one form or another, for years. Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company, the book [...]

The nation’s early leaders believed in calling a spade a spade, so when they needed to name the agency of government charged with fighting the new nation’s battles they called it simply the War Department. The name survived from 1789 to 1947 when “defense” entered the picture with a cabinet-level “Secretary of Defense.” Two years [...]

Now and then I hear George W. Bush praised for the eloquence of his remarks in a prepared speech. I do not usually want to embarrass or disillusion the listener by explaining the facts of life about White House speechmaking. However, anyone who reads Matthew Scully’s tell-all takeout in the September Atlantic on his days [...]

David Yepsen, the Des Moines Register’s chief political writer, lately has described how some of the presidential candidates stack up in terms of their presidential personas. To Yepsen, Barack Obama “looked presidential” in a recent debate, and Fred Thompson “looks the part of a president and carries himself that way. His slow talk and deep [...]

Those who want to quit Iraq in a hurry and those who believe we should stay have a lot in common: both purport to be able to foretell the future. The predictions are poles apart: the exit-now camp envisions Iraq calming down when the irritant of the U.S. occupation ends; the stay-longer faction foresees that [...]

As states try to elbow each other out of the way to lead off the presidential nominating race, Iowa’s secretary of state, Michael Mauro, told the New York Times, “We intend on maintaining our status as first in the nation.” Not that Mauro has a say in the matter. Unlike New Hampshire, where the state [...]

A three-star general was rebuked and may lose a star and a half-dozen other brass took it on the chin last week for their part in misleading the public and the family of Pat Tillman in the aftermath of his accidental death three years ago in Afghanistan. The military had gone so far as to [...]

Americans like to believe that the majority rules in this country. They are mistaken. The truth is that nothing of substance can be enacted by Congress without a super-majority in the Senate. So routine is it for the minority to rule that the New York Times reported matter-of-factly, buried far down in a story the [...]

The July 3 New York Times editorial on the Scooter Libby commutation contained a concluding paragraph that should have been beneath the Times. The paper said: “Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like [...]