Antique Toshiba Laptop, circa 2005 I had to fire up the old Toshiba computer the other day. Pain in the butt. My scanner does not work with the Mac Operating System, and it was the only way to get pictures uploaded to the hard drive and send them off my folks. It made me a […]

It was easier to think in the shower this morning, as it has been for the last few days. Normally the water pressure blasts through the old pre-green-era gooseneck, hard enough to push you down the length of the tub, and splash up over the curtain and pool on the checked tile floor. I have […]

Lionel “Buster” Crabb was a complex man. By turns he was a naval officer, hero, pioneer scuba diver and intelligence operative. He was so complex that the Cabinet files on him are sealed for another fifty years. They will not be available for us to examine until 2057, a century downstream from the end of […]

The Commander’s death, if that is what it was, is in the news again. It has taken a while, since the report about the intelligence collection operation was put under a fifty-year seal. It is a case of embarrassment to a Ministry long dead, you see, about secrets on a ship long scrapped that belonged […]

President Bush would not talk about the raid, and I don’t blame him. He was asked three times in the press conference last Thursday, and each time he declined to comment. Others are eager to talk, though not officially. The Times of London has a fine article about Operation Orchid this morning, and highlights the […]

It was late Friday afternoon. I was driving with the top down on the Mercedes, since it was warm and the sun was bright. It is still summer, and it felt like it, even if the autumnal equinox is going to roll over cocktail hour on Sunday. I was leaving the office early, intending to […]

I’ve been kicking myself this week. Maybe you have, too, but I remember the morning that they launched the new currency of Europe back in 1999. It was pegged to the US dollar, the pre-eminent currency. Think how different the world was then. There was a modest surplus in the US budget. Osama bin Laden […]

The shake-up in Public Radio continues. I know, like who cares? It is a niche network, a boutique media outlet, but it serves an important function in a lot of lives around here. Many of us are recovering news junkies, and here in Washington it is not unusual to have a friend or neighbor pop […]

It is a curious story from a region where the truth is ephemeral, and subject always to embellishment. For a change, though, it is not people in the Middle East who saying too much, but too little. What happened seems to qualify as an act of war, as if that meant anything in a world […]

The word started to spread yesterday afternoon. There was a firefight after a car bombing in Baghdad’s primarily Sunni Mansour neighborhood. The target may have been a State Department convoy under the protection of a private security firm. In the confusion that followed there was collateral damage; to wit, eight dead Iraqis. An Iraqi Interior […]