This Is Neither Pipe Nor Plagiarism

Good Morning. A few new items...

• Did Ian McEwan plagiarize Lucilla Andrews in his best-selling and wonderful “Atonement”? See "Plagiarism With a Human Face..."
  

• The circle is complete. The authoritarians, the tyrants, the regressives are back in control from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. By foolishly rushing it, President Bush set back democracy in the Middle East for who knows how many generations, ensuring a longer dark age instead. And still, and as always, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bubbles and seethes, the Middle East’s eternal, sleepless volcano. See Pierre's Tuesday Column, "Renaissance for Autocracy..."
  

• The continuing story of rising income inequalities, see "Bush's Tax Scam..."

Plenty more in Candide's Daily Journal. Thanks for reading.pt

Apres Thanksgiving

Good morning and happy post-Thanksgiving. A few new items...

• It's not quite as popular as baseball, but home-schooling is becoming an American pastime. The reason, beside the religious-nut element? public schools are too much like camp. See "Revenge of the Home-Schoolers..."
  

• Robert Novak is king of that paradox of the Washington punditocracy: terrifically informed yet analytically dim and intellectually corrupt, because drunk on that Molotov cocktail of America-First presumption: ideology and nationalistic chauvinism. See "Robert Novak, Caudillo's Knave..."
  

• From Candide's Notebooks contributor Ohdave, an essay on Ian McEwan's "Saturday," one of the better novels of the post 9/11 era. See "When Violence Crashes the Party..."

As always, plenty more in Candide's Daily Journal... Thanks for visiting.pt