Leaked to? Or obtained by? It matters which.
The currently oft-used phrase “leaked to” seems to have largely replaced “obtained by” in the discussion of documents public officials would rather keep under wraps but that surface anyway in…
Read MoreFIVE FOR FREEDOM: We Pause for An Announcement
I first met Osborne Perry Anderson nearly 17 years ago. At the time, he had been dead for 128 years. Not only dead and gone but forgotten, even though he…
Read More“Rising Tides” and “An Inconvenient Truth”
Eleven years ago, the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” focused on Al Gore’s attempt to raise public awareness of the dangers posed by global warming. http://imdb.to/2sDOjEU The film made something…
Read MoreLast Week’s (#BooksAlive2017) News Tonight
Ghostwriting haunts some ghostwriters who don’t get credit, but the tradeoff for anonymity is payment. It can be as painful to write about your own culture as it is to…
Read MoreBill McPherson: An Appreciation
For such an accomplished man of letters — Pulitzer Prize winner, novelist, literary critic, and the first editor of the Washington Post’s Book World — Bill McPherson, who died here…
Read MoreMontgomery County decides to hide, instead of confront, its ugly history
The civil war over the Confederate Civil War soldier whose granite likeness has stood for more than a century outside the Rockville courthouse appears to be over. Having been sheathed…
Read MoreOn retreat: from the present to the past…and back again
I’ve been spending a few days in the tiny Eastern Shore hamlet of Claiborne, Maryland, once a bustling ferryboat landing and now a place name but no longer a postal…
Read MoreNever again? Think again.
If this country had not admitted my immigrant grandfather Yitzchok Lempert (later known as Isaac Lampert) in 1904, and my grandmother Rochel Perski Lempart (later, Rose Lampert) three years later…
Read MoreA Journalist’s Dilemma: The Conundrum of Conscience
Much has been said and written recently about the role and importance of journalism and journalists – and the news media in general – to be truth tellers, to be…
Read MoreThe Tunnels and Other News You Can Use
In 1962, two competing networks – NBC and CBS – subsidized Germans seeking to tunnel under the Berlin Wall. The West Germans had one goal: to free their compatriots on…
Read More