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Confiscatory Democracy Confirmed Again in Court’s Obamacare Decision

Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act vividly highlights a basic ...

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Elia Kazan Reconsidered

The short list of best American film directors will forever include Elia Kazan, whose ci...

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Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’: Major Snooze

My full review of HBO's The Newsroom can be found at The Michigan View, but here's a snipp...

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Tull’s ‘Thick As a Brick’ Sequel a Worthy Follow-up to Rock Classic

Some forty years after the release of the best-selling and highly influential rock music a...

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The Death of the Daily Newspaper by Its Own Hand

Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, weeps for the...

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An Entertaining Ironical Tale: “The Third Man.”

The Third Man (1949)is a very interesting collaboration of director Carol Reed, screenw...

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Who’s Responsible for Bad TV?

Writing in The American Spectator, author and cultural critic Daniel Flynn explains that c...

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Book Review: ‘John Locke: Philosopher of American Liberty’

 JOHN LOCKE: PHILOSOPHER OF AMERICAN LIBERTY — Mary-Elaine Swanson (1927-2011) — For...

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Klavan’s ‘Crazy Dangerous’ is Crazy Good

Andrew Klavan has taken a small (but worthwhile) detour in his writing career over the la...

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Life and Death Among the Artilects — A Novel Rationale for Deism

When men fabricate new gods, will those gods invent new universes? The rise of artilects (...

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Who, Exactly, Started the ‘Culture Wars’?

There seems to be a movement afoot among liberal Christians and younger Christians that th...

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‘Cold Blue’: Well-Told, Problematic

 This will have to be a mixed review. Gary Neece’s Cold Blue is a pretty good story, ta...

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Thank God for Lady Gaga!

For those of you who know me, you might think I must be under the influence of something v...

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When a Lonely Mass Murderer Really Needs a Friend, Norwegian Taxpayers Will Buy Him One

According to a news report: The Norwegian prison where Anders Behring Breivik may be locke...

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“The Water’s Edge” Disappoints

Not long ago I heaped high praise on Norwegian author Karin Fossum's police novel, Don't ...

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Is Freedom Divisible?

Sheldon Richman says absolutely not, but thanks to some ill-advised court decisions, he sa...

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Ray Bradbury, A Writer’s Writer

I discovered Ray Bradbury in a trash can. On my way home from grammar school, I saw that s...

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The Myth of True Communism

Since my anti-Communist satire, Vampire Nation, was published over a decade ago, it has dr...

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‘Blue Bloods’ Exemplifies the Good in Contemporary Popular Culture

If Blue Bloods isn’t the best show on TV, it is certainly in the running. The recently c...

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“Blue Skies Smilin’ at Me, Nothin’ but Blue Skies Do I See” — Unless Geoengineers Have Their Way

The prevalence of nonsense associated with the so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW...

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A&E Solidifies Crime Drama Slate with ‘Longmire’

It's good to see the A&E cable network getting back into the TV drama business. Justly...

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“Don’t Look Back” is Definitely Worth a Look

“It's a legend, a story from the old days. If you're out rowing and hear a splash...

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Doc Watson, RIP

There's been an extraordinary loss of major figures in Americana and roots music in the la...

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Plum’s Appraisal of American Tunesmiths

No one so far has successfully shown that P. G. Wodehouse had a tin ear, so that his opini...

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Respect

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‘Mad Men’ Drapers Go to the Theater

Two weeks ago, I wrote Until now, the world that existed at the beginning of Mad Men has s...

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An Early American Libertarian Anarchist — Anne Hutchinson vs. The Theological Oligarchy

In Murray Rothbard's opinion, the early colonial controversialist Anne Hutchinson merits g...

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‘House’ Conclusion Satisfies Both Emotions and Intellect

For me the most interesting thing about the Fox TV series House, M.D., the final episode...

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I Lost on Jeopardy

I dedicate this post to Tom Friedman, one of the most pedestrian, overrated intellects o...

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“All Effect and No Cause”: Colliding Branes, Bouncing Universes, Promiscuous Singularities, and Fashionable Nothings — Five Versions of How It All Began

The Big Bang cosmological model is in trouble, but its adherents, reluctant to abandon the...

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Was “Smash” a smash?

One of NBC’s few, highly-rated new shows last year was Smash, a drama about trying to ge...

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Dispelling Some Myths About the World’s Most Persecuted People

Genome studies a few years ago established — as per the Bible thousands of years before ...

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‘Hunter’ Is an Intriguing Thriller, Weakened By Its Own Concept

“… They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and...