The Philosopher's Stone

It is now virtually certain that the Senate will pass the health care reform bill currently before it. We must still suffer through the ago...

As we close in on a Senate health care reform bill, Howard Dean and a number of other voices on the left have suddenly started calling for t...

I am not an enormous fan of Paul Krugman, perhaps because he was an early and fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton in the presidential prima...

While Harry Reid and his Gang of Ten await the CBO scoring on the latest complex compromise proposal, it might be well to pause for a mome...

I think my blog posts have made it abundantly clear that I am not shy about offering opinions on a wide range of matters, about many of whi...

Murray, the Shadkhan, was tired. [shadkhan -- Jewish marriage broker]. For three months, he had been trying to find a wife for Mrs. Shapi...

For what seems an eternity, I have been obsessed with the struggle to reform health care, following the death and resurrection of the public...

There are two great issues now before the country -- the reform of health care, and the future of America's involvement in Afghanistan. ...

I spent a good deal of time yesterday tuned in to the Baucus Committee hearings leading up to the vote to report out the version of health c...

I. My big sister, Barbara, who will be eighty next year, has had an extraordinarily distinguished career. After winning the Westinghouse ...

A while back, I made a prediction, and promised to eat crow publicly [or as publicly as one can on this obscure bog] if I was wrong. The pr...

The competition for the apparently much-coveted title of "Dumbest United States Senator," which for a long time was pretty well lo...

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of Paris [my apologies to the Bard.] It was in the eighties today, sun...

Last evening, Susie and I went to her son's house for his 44th birthday celebration. While there, we watched a bit of Bill Maher's ...

August is winding down, and as we approach the resumption of the real world, after Labor Day, the Republican craziness is imploding. After ...

This will be a quintessentially typical blog posting. I am going to react to Paul Klugman's op ed column today without having read it! ...

Well, we tried. Susie and I set out yesterday evening for North Carolina Central University to attend David Price's Town Hall Meeting o...

The town hall protests organized and inflamed by Republican operatives have taken an ugly turn with the appearance yesterday in New Hampshir...

I am back from San Francisco, just in time for 100 degree temperature here in Chapel Hill. I had planned to blog for a day or two about my g...

I have just returned from collecting more signatures on a petition supporting Obama’s health care proposals, as well as on postcards to be h...