VOICES

COMMENTARY - Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, is one of the very few establishment figures to denounce the judicial lynching of Julian Assange.

REVIEWING POLITICS 2021 - There’s no getting around it: 2021 has been a tough year. As with 2020, many of us are glad to see its back end. Do let the door hit you on the way out.

HOUSING CRISIS - The US Housing Market is going nuts over the last year. Inventories are near record lows while price appreciation is near record highs.

MEDIA WATCH - Legendary broadcaster and one-time Baptist preacher Bill Moyers says for the first time in his 85 years he fears for America.

COMMENTARY - The year 2021 started with high hopes, the coming victory over Covid, the coming inauguration of a Democratic president, and the banishment of a querulous one.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - Planet Earth is one of both biological and social evolution (to say nothing of chemical and physical evolution that is both manmade and non-manmade, but I digress).

ENVIRONMENT WATCH - Other than basic biological needs such as breathing and excreting, all we do is learned. We copy our parents. We are taught in school. We emulate our heroes and double-dare our friends. 

REFLECTIONS 2021 - There’s no getting around it: 2021 has been a tough year. As with 2020, many of us are glad to see its back end. Do let the door hit you on the way out.

REMEMBERING - In his absorbing profile of the writer Alex Haley (author of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”) in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Patrick Hearn made a familiar mistake.

VOICES - Some of my friends who were Californians and writers didn’t approve of Joan Didion’s essays about California, but they didn’t say so publicly.

A VIEW FROM HERE - On May 13, 2021, Biden capitulated to Nancy Pelosi and the Wokers, touching off the Delta Variant which in turn lay the basis for the Omi Variant (What nimrod chose “omicron” for a name?) 

COMMENTARY - At a time of year when people would normally be getting together with friends and family and exchanging gifts, this holiday season can seem overwhelming and empty.