Ronald Reagan was a dim hack who did horrible damage to almost everything he touched.
Launching a newspaper without a coherent idea of how you're going to promote it, or get it to people who might want to read it, is like launching a boat without a rudder or an engine... or a hull, now that I think about it.
Football was always a deal we made with ourselves. We adopted it for its brutality, which was embedded in a context that happened to be perfectly suited to television and to gambling, but which we could convince ourselves was only incidental to our enjoyment because it was only incidental to the game itself.
The murder of John Kennedy in broad daylight in the streets of an American city remains, to me, an unsolved crime.
At the time of his death, John Kennedy had a national security establishment that was a writhing ball of snakes.
Nobody loves the Boston Marathon as much as the people who make fun of it year after year. This was the race that previously offered as a prize a not particularly expensive medal, a laurel wreath, and a bowl of beef stew. This was the race that, on one memorable occasion, nobody knew who actually won.
In 1989, my father died after a prolonged struggle with Alzheimer's disease. All four of his siblings followed him into the shadow lands of that fascinating, maddening affliction.
One of the great changes wrought by the increased public awareness of Alzheimer's - and thank you, Nancy Reagan, you wonderful tough old dame, you - is that people in the early stages of the disease are now speaking out while they still have the capacity to do so.
Paul Ryan hasn't lacked for a job since he left college as the golden child of Wisconsin Republican politics, riding his family connections into a job with then-Senator Bob Kasten.
To recognize that head injuries were as essential a part of football as they are of boxing would be to erase the fine distinction on which the game's respectability rested.
School districts around the country, and the taxpayers that support them, have a moral right to the information the NFL might have concerning the medical aspects of the game, and to assess the risks to the students in their charge. Colleges have a moral right to that information for the same reasons.
There was no way to lock down, or tighten up, or Fail-Safe into Security Theater a race that covers 26.2 miles, a race that travels from town to town, a race that travels past people's houses. There was no way to garrison the Boston Marathon. Now there will be.
