The New Republic

To page three, no less. Well, it's about a new restaurant. And a liquor license. And the (kind of) people who will come there. And the enormous common garden, called MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens, accessible only to 22 private houses of which Anna Wintour's is one.  The community meeting where Anna spoke up is written about in Saturday's chic left The Independent.  "I am completely concerned...This is a unique historic neighborhood." READ MORE >>

You can’t have missed the fiendish photograph of a North Korean soldier  hovering through a window over Hillary Clinton as she stands in a hut  at the “truce village” at Panmunjom in no-man’s land just below what  her husband had called after a trip “the scariest place on earth.”    READ MORE >>

Somehow I missed this move by CNN. I hadn’t seen anything about it until I read Tom Friedman’s column in the Times and, then, Jack Shafer’s insistently simple-minded article in Slate. Here’s Octavia Nasr’s offending Tweet: Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot. READ MORE >>

The brilliant young(ish) Catholic intellectual Michael Sean Winters has alerted us in the National Catholic Reporter to a venomous streak among “progressives” of the faith. The particularly repulsive iteration of this streak appeared in The American Catholic. Here is its essence: Is the ultimate plan of the Israeli braintrust to find a rationale for one big war to ethnically cleanse most of the rest of the Palestinians into Jordan/Egypt/Lebanon et al? READ MORE >>

The Kabul conference has come and gone, a half day fest which put the finishing touches on the plans for Afghani security and how it can be helped by fully 70 governments, all in attendance, and, of course, with the United Nations represented by its secretary general Ban Ki-Moon. On Monday, Mrs. Clinton was in Pakistan; on Tuesday, Kabul; on Wednesday, South Korea, right onto the edge of its demilitarized zone with North Korea. Today, she is in Hanoi and, of course, she has reproached the government of Vietnam for its well-documented contempt for human rights. READ MORE >>

It's not exactly an explanation of the position. But it does make some sense to the very wealthy. From El Pais: Translation: "we avoid paying taxes because we don't want to flaunt our wealth." READ MORE >>

In any case, the nations with which Barack Obama seems to think he clicks are not especially respected (or liked) by the people he represents. And these presidentially favored nations don't really seem to respect either him or us. Basta with the Muslim orbit. Obama wants to run after Recip Tayyit Erdogan let him.   READ MORE >>

One of President Obama's weirdest causes is his defense of the hijab or the niqab. Not that I want to take the veil away from any Muslim women... anywhere. Still, he is president of the United States and might just want to limit his special pleadings to truly significant ones. Anyway, he didn't. He tried out the trope in Cairo last year and followed it up during the Ramadan fest at the White House. These turned out to be not very successful interventions. READ MORE >>

It is as clear as daylight, and my particular information with all the caveats and special emphases comes from the most respectable pro- Palestinian journalist there is.  His name is Tobias Buck and he writes for the Financial Times where every piece published about the Jewish state--whose capital, in case you didn't know, is Tel Aviv--is jaundiced.  Jaundiced as in exhibiting distaste and hostility. READ MORE >>

I understand the obsessions of writers, and I certainly understand Maureen Dowd's fixations on her church and how the Vicar of Christ has disillusioned so many of the faithful. READ MORE >>