“Armed with a black belt in karate and a Ph.D. in philosophy, Patrick Swayze …” — do we even need the rest of that sentence? Could the capsule summary of the original 1989 Road House append any predicate that wouldn’t be awesome? “Ups production at the local cardboard factory.” “Attends George H.W. Bush’s inauguration.” “Gets […]

Last month, the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez published his seventh novel, Until August. (The pedantic might suggest that at a slim 110 pages in suspiciously large type, it is more accurately described as a novella, but never mind.) There would be nothing especially remarkable about this, save that Márquez died almost exactly a […]

There is a moment in Nicholas Shakespeare’s new biography of Ian Fleming in which one of the James Bond author’s female friends, not conquests, is quoted as saying that he harbored the ambition to be “the Renaissance ideal, the Complete Man.” Shakespeare has taken the second part of this for the subtitle of his study. […]

Lyndon Johnson once observed that “power is where power goes.” In his new book, Jared Cohen deftly explores what the most powerful men in the world do after the power is gone. Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House examines the post-presidential careers of seven very different former […]

Cities controlled by Democrats have decided that arresting criminals is too hard. It is much easier to turn their cities into surveillance states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that 480 surveillance cameras would be installed in and around Oakland. According to Newsom, “we’re equipping law enforcement with the tools they need to effectively combat criminal […]

An engaged police force is an effective police force. This is why police departments across the country often run features on their social media accounts such as “Mug Shot Monday” or “Wanted Wednesday.” The thinking is, the more members of a community engage with police online, the more likely they are to trust and respect […]

Christine Blasey Ford has returned to the news with the recent release of her memoir, One Way Back. You’ll remember Ford as the lead protagonist of the smearing of Brett Kavanaugh at the eleventh hour of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in September 2018, with evermore fantastical allegations that the longtime federal judge and six-times-vetted […]

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) slammed New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s (D) invitation to stay at a migrant shelter in New York during his visit to the Big Apple, calling it a “gimmick” in an interview on Thursday. “The invitation is nothing more than a gimmick,” Abbott said during an interview on Fox News’s...

Iran executed 853 people in 2023 – the highest number on record since 2015, according to a new report in Amnesty International. The surge in executions comes as Iran continues what Amnesty calls Iran’s “war on drugs.” In 2023, more than half – 481 – of the total executions were for drug-related offenses. The mass...

McDonald's announced Thursday that Omri Padan, the CEO and owner of Alonyal Limited, would be selling its franchises in Israel back to the corporation. Alonyal began its McDonald’s operations in Israel more than 30 years ago and now has “grown the business to 225 restaurants and more than 5,000 employees.” The employees and restaurant operations...