About Benjamin Kerstein

At least Osama bin-Laden, despite being a psychotic mass murderer, knows who his friends are. While the exact date of the taping cannot be determined by bin Laden's words, he suggests it was made in August by saying, "… just … Read More

Someone in Europe appears to have finally understood the most pernicious aspect of 21st century antisemitism — the congenital inability of most of its practitioners to understand the fact of their antisemitism.  From Haaretz: Robin Shepherd is not the first … Read More

Regarding Leo Strauss, there is something particularly bizarre in the fact that the discussion always turns to politics. Not Politics in the Aristotelean sense, but everyday politics; the transient concerns and resentments of the current moment. Strauss, who thought in … Read More

The New Republic has an interesting profile of an evangelical priest who converted to Orthodox Christianity because of his disatisfaction with the frivolousness of evangelical ritual.  I couldn't help but notice a certain synchronicity at work.

Everytime you think that an American national holiday might have passed in peace, you find out that America's most famous faux-historian Howard Zinn showed up just in time to — paraphrasing Hunter Thompson — piss down everybody's throats. On this … Read More

The Reform movement has once again made an attempt at the impossible: to find some way of normalizing homosexual relationships within the context of Judaism. The Reform Movement recently published an expanded manual for the inclusion of homosexuals and transgender … Read More

Israel's most industrious theocrat, Moshe Feiglin, continues his quest for influence and power in the Likud Party and, according to Haaretz, he's succeeding. Why not place a ballot box at Ben-Gurion Airport by the duty-free shops? Or by the entrance … Read More

Bill Kristol (anti-neocon psychopathic raving may begin now) has written an interesting article in Time in which he claims that a new "9/11 generation" is taking shape, particularly among the soldiers currently fighting in Iraq. He claims that this will … Read More

My friend Michael Totten, who is a much braver man than I, has been posting from the heart of the whirlwind that is Iraq today.  Its all a must read.  Go check it out.

The recent death of Michaelangelo Antonioni has occasioned a fascinating letter to Roger Ebert, alleging to reveal the fairly banal reason why Antonioni's sixties classic Blow-Up is so ambiguous and strange, which is to say, why it doesn't make a … Read More