The holiday movie season is upon us. No, I don't mean Four Christmases and Nothing Like the Holidays and the endless broadcasts of It's A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. I'm talking about Valkyrie, the movie about the attempted assassination of Hitler, and The Spirit, Frank Miller's blood-saturated...

Will all famous people turn out to be surprisingly stupid? Six weeks ago, Sarah Palin surprised us with her understanding of the vice president's duties by saying, inaccurately, "They're in charge of the US Senate so if they want to, they can really get in there with the Senators and...

FOXBORO, MASS. -- Acting boldly to fill the void left by the injury to perennial All-Pro Tom Brady, the New England Patriots announced that they had signed Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the team's starting quarterback. "We're extremely excited," said team owner Robert Kraft. "In Sarah Palin, we have a...

The Montana cabin where Theodore Kaczynski was captured is included in an exhibit on the history of the FBI currently mounted at Washington's Newseum. In a hand-written letter to the US Court of Appeals which can be viewed at The Smoking Gun, the infamous Unabomber, whose bombs...

Sunday night marks the return of Mad Men, the AMC program that is now without dispute the best program on television. What's most interesting about this series is that even though each episode emphasizes different characters having different experiences and feeling different emotions, one prominent element of every episode is...

The story rocking my little town in suburban New York is that of a senior at our high school's graduation ceremony who marked the occasion by mooning the audience. This act would have been news enough, but then the principal -- a fine and dedicated public servant known to...

Don't look for Scott McClellan at any Bush administration reunions. His old mates seem none too happy with him these days. Of course, what they're saying may not be exactly the same as what they're thinking.

WHAT PRESS SECRETARY DANA PERINO SAID: "[The President] is puzzled, and he doesn't recognize...

The other shoe dropped last week. Senator McCain appeared before a group of students at Wake Forest and vowed to appoint judges "strictly faithful to the Constitution'' who would not engage in "the common and systemic abuse of our federal courts." As The New York Times noted, "The issue...

Tonight the American Society of Magazine Editors will present its annual awards that recognize excellence in the various talents and skills that go into making magazines. Those who have been nominated, and those who will win -- many among them my friends and former colleagues -- well deserve this acknowledgment...

So Governor Eliot Spitzer has acknowledged importing a prostitute from New York to Washington DC. This certainly seems like the 21st century, service economy version of carrying coals to Newcastle. One would think it would be possible to find a prostitute in Washington, but maybe Jack Abramoff's experience had a...

"In April 2005, police swarmed the U.S. Capitol to confront an erratic Australian man, carrying two suitcases, who they feared was a suicide bomber. After blowing up one of the bags, officers realized he was harmless. The police never noticed the two nervous young men on a nearby sidewalk filming...