In New York they celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a parade, green beer and a lot of shamrocks. In this town, we do things differently. Read on »

Do the Spanish elections matter? Even stating that question is, in an American political context, absurd: Of course they don’t. Spain is far away. The Spanish voters’ decision to throw out their government can’t possibly affect the U.S. elections. Read on »

The campaigns are winding down; the polling booths are being readied for voters. The Russian authorities are engaged in a massive get-out-the-vote effort. By this time next week Russia will have a new president, or a reelected one. All seems to be well in Russia’s new democracy. Read on »

Why has “The Passion of the Christ,” a film that has already set box office records, caused so much fuss in this country? By the standards of Hollywood, the film should have sparked no reaction at all. Read on »

Sometimes in the course of a great American debate there comes a moment when the big battle guns fall silent, the pundits run out of breath, and — unexpectedly — the long, bitter argument suddenly turns into farce. Read on »

It isn’t in the news. It doesn’t have any impact, at the moment, on anyone’s daily life. It isn’t the kind of thing that the president talks about in State of the Union speeches, or that the Democratic candidates talk about on the stump. And it might also prove to be the greatest threat to this country’s physical and political existence in the 21st century. Read on »

Call me lucky. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve heard three of the most important administration officials answer questions about the intelligence that led to their decision to go to war with Iraq. The settings were different. Read on »

Nearly 60 years ago last week, Auschwitz was liberated. On Jan. 27, 1945, four Russian soldiers rode into the camp. They seemed “wonderfully concrete and real,” remembered Primo Levi, one of the prisoners, “perched on their enormous horses, between the gray of the snow and the gray of the sky.” Read on »

“What a difference thirty years can make,” writes Colin L. Powell, the U.S. secretary of state, at the start of an article he published this week in Izvestia, a Russian newspaper. Indeed. Read on »

As of last weekend, Conrad Black, the famous media mogul, is no longer a media mogul at all: He has sold his newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph of London, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post. Read on »