Author Archives: nick

I have begun scanning my father’s color slides so that they will be preserved in a digital format. Mom sent me the first of 35 boxes of slides. There were 134 slides in the projector carousel. Looking at these old … Continue reading →

I think Romney is toast. I watched JFK give his speech and answer questions from the Christers last night on CSPAN. What a contrast. Kennedy was civil and gracious, but very clear and very tough, and not yielding an inch … Continue reading →

We went to Chota last week, over in East Tennessee, near Maryville, where we got married, and I took this picture. Yeah, I tweaked the colors a little bit, but not that much. Besides, that’s really how it looked to … Continue reading →

Norman Mailer has been a hero of mine for most of my adult life. I’ve read most of his voluminous output over the years, and loved it, by and large, although it’s been awhile since I’ve read anything of his. … Continue reading →

Al Qaeda has been defeated. There is no civil war. Iraq is in process of becoming the most stable, the most democratic, the most unified between Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish, nation in the Middle East, except for Israel. Will there … Continue reading →

Here is the view from the front porch swing of our house in Murfreesboro.

The “General Betray Us” ad in the New York Times reminds me of the new Osama Bin Laden video. They are both astonishingly revealing of the minds behind them, and their lack of connection to reality. The smug fantasies that … Continue reading →

I’m considering changing the name of this blog to no-opinions.com. Why should I have any political opinions? It has occurred to me lately that having political opinions is a hobby less useful and potentially more dangerous than any number of … Continue reading →

This intriguing but doomed article in Slate, Why Petraeus’ intriguing new Iraq strategy will probably fail by Fred Kaplan purports to show that Petraeus and his generals and the ambassador to Iraq are all wrong to suppose that we have … Continue reading →

What really needs to happen is to clean up the legal immigration bureaucracy first. And then, after that, it’s not really about a fence so much. It’s about a tamper-proof, universal id card, and strict enforcement against those who hire … Continue reading →