A Revealing Rally On Saturday November 10, on a visit to my wife’s friends in South Philadelphia (near the turf immortalized by Rocky), I attended a Ron Paul rally at Independence Mall. By the time the hurried candidate arrived at the scene, at 1:45 PM, the mulling crowds already numbered in the thousands (perhaps … [Read More]

Three months before the Americans committed their greatest foreign policy blunder ever, I had gone up to Cape Cod to interview my friend of fifty years, Norman Mailer. Towards the end of his life Norman called himself a Left- Conservative, and went as far as to agree that losing one’s culture through immigration was not a good thing. But he remained … [Read More]

Greece was not green like I had expected from Renaissance poetry about Arcadia. Delphi and Athens were a bust. Stones and tourists in the searing summer heat. So it was off to the islands. I met Count de Stefano on the flight over to Mykonos. He was from Venice, born in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Charged, fantee, and girl … [Read More]

On the morning of Monday, June 28, 2004, Carol Jean Nicholson fell out of love. A professor of philosophy at Rider University, best known as Alma Mater to Woody Allen’s underage beloved, Dr. Nicholson would liken her experience to Bertrand Russell’s realization, while riding a bicycle, that he no longer cared for his wife. Nicholson wasn’t riding a bike but reading … [Read More]

The first phase of the smear campaign against Ron Paul was all about “spamming”—sending unsolicited email with pro-Paul messages. This was and is a lot of malarkey, as spammers notoriously glom on to anything that is of current interest and more likely to get the recipient to open the email. Now we have anti-Paul spam, and there’s no question that it’s … [Read More]

Some Democrats, as I said here, are baffled that Ron Paul is such a successful politician, what with no pork-barrel appeal and his refusal to kowtow to the intellectual and party elites, but others, such as Shane Sklar, his Democratic opponent in the last congressional elections, get it, as this piece put out by the McClatchy newspapers reports: “President Ron Paul? … [Read More]

I love this quote from a McClatchy News Service piece on Ron Paul: “‘He’s definitely an enigma,’ said Allen Cumbie, the head of the Democratic Party in Matagorda County, Texas. ‘I don’t even think he tries to get legislation passed that benefits this district ... and yet he continues to be elected year after year. I don’t really know how to … [Read More]

Continuing my discussion of the howling coming from the neocon-leftist anti-Paul Popular Front, demanding that he return a $500 contribution from a politically incorrect source, we have a fascinating debate unfolding over at the Goldberg National Review. Here’s their token paleocon (they keep him around because of this), the delightful John Derbyshire: “Has anyone else noticed that “Ron Paul” almost rhymes … [Read More]

Asked by Rolling Stone what he thought of Benito Giuliani’s role as the “warmonger-in-chief” of the GOP presidential pack, Ron Paul replied: “Since Giuliani is so anxious to go to war, somebody ought to ask him why he didn’t go when he was called up instead of ducking it like some of those other chicken hawks — he took, what, four … [Read More]

The Smear Bund is busy, what with the Ron Paul campaign and all. I’ve covered the controversy here, but there’s more to say. The brouhaha is over the fact that the Bund’s crack investigators have been poring over Ron’s FEC filings, which identify each and every contributor to the campaign—they hate the fact that he’s been so successful, you know, it … [Read More]