Bill Moyers has done it again. To observe some of my fellow countrymen acting like imbeciles is disturbing. I suppose one should be inured to it by now. Still, it is deplorable. If you saw the program, you know what I am talking about. If not, it was Bill Moyers Journal from Friday, October 5th, on PBS, entitled “Endgame in the Holy Land, Christians United for Israel” followed by a discussion segment, “Israel’s new best friend, American Evangelicals”. Moyers makes an honest attempt to come to grips with the “Christian Zionists”. Just amazing. Watch the videos or read the transcripts. For … 
[Read More]

On 18 August 2007 at 10:30 P.M., my brother Andre, writer-documentary-maker Ed Canfield, and I led a candlelight procession of some 50 people down Selma Avenue in Hollywood , California . The cavalcade wended its three block-long way from an establishment called The Piano Bar to an office building inhabited by an outfit called “Five Star Video,” at 1555 Cassil Place . Despite the date, this was not an observance in honor of St. Agapitus—Hollywood is not known for its festas (although in recent years the feast of San Gennaro has become a local observance—thanks to Jimmy Kimmel, of all people). … 
[Read More]

In 2004, His Eminence Raymond Burke, archbishop of St. Louis, received a standing ovation from the denizens of St. Blog’s Parish, that loose collection of conservative Catholic bloggers, when he declared that pro-choice Catholic politicians such as John Kerry should be denied Communion for the sake of their souls.  Archbishop Burke was rightly hailed as courageous, and St. Blog’s parishioners defended him against the inevitable charge that he was acting as a shill for President Bush’s reelection campaign. Which makes the silence in those hallowed halls today all the more deafening.  Yesterday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a lengthy article entitled … 
[Read More]

It is now close to fifty years that karate—the art of empty hand fighting—has been popular in the West. Karate’s aim is to develop a synergism of the will, the nerves and the muscles which manifests itself in the maximum controlled release of energy, speed and strength.  Good karate means command of the mind as well as the body. Although there are countless styles and thousands of so called grand masters, one thing is certain: In order for karate to be effective it has to be a thing of beauty. Grace, speed, strength, discipline, courage, humility, all combine to make a … 
[Read More]

He lives on the same street two blocks east of me, and his house is reported to be the largest in Manhattan, and I have bumped into him at times—literally—but he is as disgusting a human being as it is possible to be and still be out of jail. But not for long. Jeffrey Epstein, a big-time Noo Yawk investment manager and multi-billionaire has agreed to plead guilty to soliciting underage prostitutes at his Palm Beach mansion in a deal that will send him to prison for about 18 months. This is the semi-official announcement.  The reality is somewhat different. Epstein … 
[Read More]

An article in the rather odd little magazine Democratiya, a liberal-left pro-interventionist Euston Manifesto-ish periodical run out of some minor British university, reports on “the paleocon imagination” as exemplified by The American Conservative, and Antiwar.com, within the framework of an alleged review of Bill Kauffman’s Look Homeward, America. Author Dan Erdman and his audience are lefties, tourists in the exotic world of the right, of which they know next to nothing: such is their ignorance that Erdman cites none other than William F. Buckley, Jr., as the inspirer of antiwar/“isolationist” paleocons, such as Pat Buchanan, the editors of TAC, and even … 
[Read More]

How clueless is Rush Limbaugh? This clueless: “You know, when I talk about people who labor behind the scenes and are working hard down there in the basements and they get no notoriety or very little, very little acclaim, other than within their group, Podhoretz is one of those guys.” Oh sure—a man whose major literary output has been, as Murray Rothbard once pointed out, “a series of autobiographies celebrating his own life and thought,” is just an anonymous cog in the neocon war machine.” As for his alleged lack of notoriety: is Rush really this ignorant? Norm is famous as … 
[Read More]

The latest from Ramesh Ponnuru on the National Review blog: “Paleos make highly charged attacks on their enemies on the Right and then expect to be treated like wounded puppies whenever anyone else responds in kind. Pat Buchanan has spent much of the last two decades accusing various conservatives of “treason” for supporting free trade, the war in Iraq, etc. He publishes a magazine that suggested that David Frum was an Israeli agent of influence inside the White House. Frum wrote an essay for NR calling the paleos ‘anti-American,’ and you would think, from the paleos’ reaction—they still bring up (and … 
[Read More]

Israel is our friend—right? Well, not quite, as the latest revelations about the sinking of the USS Liberty make all too clear, and the survivors of that attack—in which 34 US servicemen were killed, and at least 173 wounded by Israeli fighter jets—are angry: “Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency’s position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots—communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that … 
[Read More]

The reviews of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy are coming in, and—yes, I know you’re shocked—they largely confirm the book’s thesis: that the Lobby is determined to smear anyone who so much as posits their existence. Over at The New Republic, the heavy-breathing is particularly intense: “And yet the fact is that the Israelis, and the pro-Israel lobby, were focused mainly on the threat from Iran, not Iraq, during the first years of this decade. AIPAC supported the administration in its pursuit of Saddam Hussein, but only after the invasion seemed to be a fait accompli. Last month, in … 
[Read More]