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The Cricketers.....

In many ways, Jonathan Sperber suggests, Marx was “a backward-looking figure,” whose vision of the future was modeled on conditions quite different from any that prevail today: The view of Marx as a contemporary whose ideas are shaping the modern world has run its course and it is time for a new understanding of him as a figure of a past historical epoch, one increasingly distant from our own: the age of the French Revolution, of Hegel’s philosophy, of the early years of English industrialization and the political economy stemming from it. Sperber’s aim is to present Marx as he...

I recently spent 96 mesmerizing minutes viewing the latest film release of the story of Sir Nicholas Winton at the Detroit Film Theatre within the Detroit Institute of Arts complex. “Nicky’s Family” (http://www.menemshafilms.com/nickys-family) portrays the bold actions of a young British businessman who saved 669 Jewish children from almost certain death in the days before World War II broke out on Sept. 1, 1939. The story of determination is amazing. The story of a humble man is inspiring. I am sure some in the theatre were learning of Nicky’s actions for the first time. The film shares the story of...

Don't Webb's words pretty much sum up what the Obama administration and the progressive left is all about? Aren't these same views on Southern rednecks also . . .

The share of shale oil in the total global production will reach 9 percent by 2020, BP Senior Economist Lev Freinkman says. Freinkman said while presenting BP's "Energy Outlook by 2030" in Baku on Wednesday that the growth in production volume will account for shale oil which will be produced in the United States. As early as this year, the U.S. will take the lead in the world in terms of production and will retain its position in the next decade. As for shale gas production, Freinkman said that by 2030 the share of shale gas in total global production...

PORTLAND, Maine — Stephen King and his wife have made a donation to a Maine group advocating for stricter gun control laws. King says the gift was "five figures" but doesn't want to say more about it because "charity's supposed to be a private thing." The Coalition for a Safer Maine says King is a gun owner and a defender of the Second Amendment who supports expanded background checks on gun sales and a ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines.....

Dennis Delucia faces 46 months when sentenced on an extortion conviction, and his lesbian daughter Donna has submitted a letter to Brooklyn federal judge Kiyo Matsumoto in an attempt to humanize the reputed Colombo capo who was supportive of her coming out process as reported by John Marzulli for the Daily News: "My dad accepted me, embraced me and has supported me. His love and acceptance helped me through the rough times and growing pains." Donna now lives in Kentucky with her partner and their 9-year-old boy, and she would like a light sentence for her gangster dad because "I...

John Woodman is a one time author, a self proclaimed computer expert who decided to take it upon himself to get recruited, according to CCP Investigator Mike Zullo, and write a book debunking the claims that Obama has a forged birth certificate and that he is not a natural born Citizen. On Friday, April 5, 2013, Lt. Mike Zullo took calls from listeners for one hour on a radio program. As expected, a caller who has been revealed to be a Obama supporter called in and asked Zullo why he didn't consult with John Woodman on the criminal fraud investigation....

Author M. Stanton Evans got an early lesson in his law of inadequate paranoia: “No matter how bad you think things are, when you look into them you find that they are a lot worse.” Evans followed future editor (at National Review) William F. Buckley, Jr., into Yale. “I read God and Man at Yale, which was being attacked on campus, and said, ‘This is exactly how it is,’” Evans remembered in a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In a segment sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), Evans regaled the audience at CPAC with remarks...

I discovered Aaron Clarey’s work when I watched this you tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO5Gayz4NNw The video intrigued and and I purchased his book “Enjoy the Decline”. I don’t agree with everything Aaron has to say in the book but I do believe he is on the right track when he says that we have to modify our thinking about this country and to modify our behavior to match this new reality. We have rarely interviewed people outside the speculative fiction community for this site but I believe Captain Capitalism has something important to say about the future of this nation and...

Good morning everyone! If you are reading this than be aware that the headline is absolutely not a trick, this is pure vanity. No hidden news or nuggets of truth here. I have a new book out! It's an historical fiction set in Nottingham, England in 1199. Yep, it's a Robin Hood story. But there is a little twist. This story is from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Here is the promo blurb: ---------------------------------------------- King Richard is dead. With King John on the throne, the Sheriff of Nottingham knows he will soon be replaced by one...

Author Richard Linnett is out with his biography In the Godfather Garden about Genovese capo Ruggiero "Ritchie the Boot" Boiardo who controlled the rackets (and often the politicians) in Newark, NJ until his death in 1984 as reviewed by Charles Cooper for The Star-Ledger: "he lived long enough to come in contact with just about every mobster you've heard of -- and supposedly had a hand in whacking a few of them." Apparently Boiardo enjoyed tending to the gardens on his 30-room estate in Livingston which was described as a "macabre home" in a 1967 Life magazine article: "From the...

Celebrity gossip monger and intrepid crime reporter Lee Mortimer titillated his gentle readers across the nation with his syndicated column New York Confidential during the 1950s and 1960s, and among his blind items was that a former governor of the Empire State was among the prominent patrons of gay bar Regents Row. Regents Row was operated by boyfriends Tommy Dowling and Lucky Moore in midtown Manhattan on East 43rd Street, and after it burnt down Mortimer wrote about the upscale establishment in his August 1, 1960 column: "The Regents Row situation grows curioser and curioser by the second. Shortly before...

Gay activists insist that “faggot” comes from the word for the kindling beneath the feet of heretical homosexuals. That’s a lie. But while the word “faggot” doesn’t come from “a bundle of sticks,” the word “fascist” does. Funny, that. Behold: In the name of “truth, justice and the American way,” a renowned science-fiction writer has just been condemned to (professional) death for expressing his views on homosexuality in a tiny Mormon magazine almost twenty-five years ago. Orson Scott Card wrote the beloved 1985 Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel Ender’s Game“ about the innocence of a child winning out over war...

This week the Enquiring Hitchhiker is proud to bring you the New York Times bestselling author of the Monster Hunter series Larry Correia… Question 1. You broke into writing by self publishing your first book. How did you market the novel and what experiences positive and negative did you have with that first book? ------- After getting rejected everywhere I decided to self publish. Since I was already well known in the internet gun community, I concentrated my efforts there. Specifically on a couple of gun forums, including one that I’d been a moderator on for a really long time....

Undercover agents are advised to incorporate a core part of their real personality into their criminal persona in order to keep the true self from getting irretrievably lost in the manufactured role. For Jack Garcia, the Cuban-born FBI agent who infiltrated the Gambino family in 2002 as Jack Falcone in a two-year investigation which resulted in the convictions of capo Greg DePalma and his Westchester County crew, the key piece of his authentic personality which he carried into the undercover work was his good heart. Jack Garcia chronicled his many undercover experiences over a 26-year career with the Bureau in...

NEW YORK — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has a new book coming, this time about Christmas. The former Republican vice presidential candidate has a deal with HarperCollins for "A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas," scheduled for November. HarperCollins announced Monday the book will criticize the "over-commercialism" and "homogenization" of Christmas and call for a renewed emphasis on the religious importance....

Both Egypt and Tunisia have looked to Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a model for the Arab Spring in their own states. In his recent book, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, Andrew C. McCarthy condemns this outlook as “perverse.” “It is perverse to regard the Islamist AKP as a ‘model for the Arab Spring,’” he argues. “The main lesson of the Arab Spring is that the mirage of Islam as a moderating force hospitable to democratic transformation exists solely in our own minds, for our own consumption.” McCarthy goes into depth about the changes in Turkey...

On Tuesday, the Hill published a story noting that the organizers of the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the preeminent national confab for politicians and activists of the right, are responding to the last November's election by using the event to "showcase the movement's 'diversity.'" Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Sarah Palin will be headlining, but 20 percent of the panelists this year will be African American, according to CPAC bean counters. And the CPACers proudly point to the prominent role of Latinos and women on various panels. Yet the CPAC organizers have neglected one important task as they...

In Afghanistan, farmers grow poppy for opium, which is later processed into heroin and, ultimately, sold as heroin on the black market. How, when the Quran defines drugs as “the filth of Satan’s handiwork,” does the Islamic populace in Afghanistan justify growing this illicit crop? For one thing, the sale, but not consumption, of opium is acceptable to the locals because it is supposedly consumed by the West–by infidels–and thus furthers the war on them, outlines Gretchen Peters in her book Seeds of Terror: How Drugs, Thugs, and Crime Are Reshaping the Afghan War. Peters has worked for the Associated...

The nation of Syria is collapsing into a bloody, chaotic, nearly genocidal civil war. The days of the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad are numbered. It is not a matter of if Assad will fall, but when. The countdown is underway. Few Americans will be sad to see Assad go. The cruel tyrant deserves to be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity, and the people of Syria desperately need to be set free. Still, few realize just how dangerous the implosion of Syria really will be. First, in desperation, Assad could use his stockpiles of WMDs against his...

In his last State of the City address, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg bragged about his huge taxpayer investments in education. “Now, let me ask you: is there anyone who still believes that New York City can’t get big things done? Since we’re here in Brooklyn, I’ll say it again: Fuhgeddaboudit.” Bloomberg was right about one thing only: forgetting about it. Because not only are big things not getting done in New York City on education, even small things aren’t getting done. According to officials from City University of New York, a full 80 percent of high school graduates...

It’s been nearly a year since the death of Osama bin Laden, and the American public has become accustomed to hearing about an al Qaeda no longer under his leadership, be it in Yemen, Mali, or elsewhere. However, even while bin Laden was in hiding, al Qaeda was dominated by his micromanagement skills, whether it was the decision not to institute Anwar al-Awlaki head of Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) or suggestions on how to avoid drone strikes. In his book, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad, Peter L. Bergen argues that al...

Just one week from today — Tuesday, March 5th — Damascus Countdown releases. This international political thriller is the last novel in a trilogy that includes The Twelfth Imam and The Tehran Initiative. The series focuses on David Shirazi, an Iranian-born operative for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Shirazi has been sent undercover to Tehran to identify and sabotage the Ayatollah’s top secret nuclear weapons program, a program that is being developed in coordination with North Korea. Meanwhile, even as an American President realizes he has waited too long to stop Iran, he pressures Israeli leaders not to take action...

Just one week from today — Tuesday, March 5th — Damascus Countdown releases. This international political thriller is the last novel in a trilogy that includes The Twelfth Imam and The Tehran Initiative. The series focuses on David Shirazi, an Iranian-born operative for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Shirazi has been sent undercover to Tehran to identify and sabotage the Ayatollah’s top secret nuclear weapons program, a program that is being developed in coordination with North Korea. Meanwhile, even as an American President realizes he has waited too long to stop Iran, he pressures Israeli leaders not to take action...

The American Left and the Islamists work together to sabotage American, spreading their social justice (or sharia) values in a way that is inimical to American values, argues Andrew C. McCarthy in his book The Grand Jihad. For the hard left, social justice translates into Marxism and communism. For the Islamist, social justice leads to implementing Sharia and an Islamic state. These two are natural partners, he argues, because of their pursuit of “power” and opposition to American liberties. (McCarthy’s newest book is Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy.) A riveting tale of Islam in America and abroad, in...

President blamed conservative “media preferred by Republican constituencies” as part of gridlock in Washington. Texas Insider Report: Washington, D.C. – “I think there are a lot of Republicans at this point, that feel that given how much energy has been devoted in some of the media that’s preferred by Republican constituencies, to demonize me. It doesn’t look real good socializing with me,” Obama said in a press conference Monday. The preferred media was presumably talk radio and Fox News. After the press conference, Rush Limbaugh said of Obama on his radio show, “What he does is position his political opponents...

One of the things that was apparent as I researched the book on Lexington, Virginia and the Civil War, was the mistreatment of Lexington's citizens (Union and Confederate) by Union general David Hunter's army. As my memory was refreshed, I also recalled how a number of Civil War bloggers have downplayed this aspect of the war, even questioning the veracity of some of the claims of Southern civilians; while others took a "so what?" attitude and, in some cases, actually became cheerleaders in justifying such treatment for the "slave-holding rebels." They often sound more like advocates of revenge than they...

In the December 2012 issue, The Blaze provides exclusive excerpts from Fred Lucas’ new book, “The Right Frequency: The Story of the Talk Radio Giants Who Shook Up the Political and Media Establishment.” In the book, Lucas covers the growth, influence, major players and victories conservative talk radio has seen over the years. He provides history lessons and insight into how and why radio has been so influential. In an exclusive feature for TheBlaze Magazine, “Power of Talk,” Lucas gives us adapted excerpts from his new book. The magazine feature includes coverage of the Left’s attempts to tie right-wing talk...

Almost daily it flirts with Rush Limbaugh and Wendy Williams on Amazon’s Best Seller List for Radio History and Criticism. One day it is wedged between the two, another day it slips back a notch or two only to scramble back to Rush’s rear guard.. It is Fred Lucas’s The Right Frequency; The Story of the Talk Radio Giants who Shook up the Political and Media Establishment. While Zev Chafetz’ best seller on Rush Limbaugh focuses solely on Rush and Wendy focuses on her experience, Fred Lucas delves into the whole world of talk radio and opens up on Glen...

Talk radio is again a focal point of debate in America in light of the recent election. Some argue that Republicans must discard the advice of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Others contend the radio hosts are still the most formidable voice of conservative commentary in the face of four more years of a Democratic president. The Right Frequency by Fred V. Lucas, a book that traces talk radio from its roots to becoming a dynamic force in conservative politics, has been well received by book critics and conservative commentators throughout the country. Publishers Weekly says, “Lucas’s love and knowledge...

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who died earlier this month, was a legendary political figure. Barry Farber was a legendary talk radio host in the Big Apple, whose voice dominated the powerful WOR throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The two larger-than-life figures would face off in 1977, when Koch was seeking his first term as mayor. Farber was interviewed in The Right Frequency: The Story of the Talk Radio Giants Who Shook Up the Political and Media Establishment by Fred V. Lucas (History Publishing Co.). Below is an excerpt: *** Covering a quarter of WOR’s airtime was enough exposure...

When Kurt Sonnenfeld calls police to report his young, beautiful wife is dying with a bullet in her head, he alleges she shot herself. Police think otherwise.

"Dr. Ben Carson was one of two sons born to Sonya Carson, a single mother who had married Ben's father at thirteen years of age. Ben's father was a bigamist, and after learning of his other family, Sonya resolved to raise her two sons alone. Though in poverty, and though she herself had no formal education beyond third grade, she insisted that her sons devote diligent efforts to their education. She required that the boys read books from the public library each week and write lengthy reports for her (which she would review for them to support their effort, despite...

TechRepublic member lcallander asked me for some suggested reading material, with a rather intriguing sci-fi stipulation: “I was rereading an old post, where guys were reminiscing about reading ‘Heinlein, Asimov, and Clark,’ my personal favorites. I got out of reading SF in the ’80s and am bewildered by the variety today. What do guys who liked H, A, and C read today?” Well, that’s a really interesting question. I’m really only able to answer the Heinlein part of it, since I’ve read very, very little Clarke or Asimov (blasphemy, I know). John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and...

That an Ivy League historian takes exception to the idea of American Exceptionalism may not surprise. That the skeptic is not a man of the Left is rather noteworthy. “The term did not even exist until the middle of the Twentieth Century,” University of Pennsylvania historian Walter McDougall claimed in remarks at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Alexis deTocqueville used it as an adjective but it did not get picked up,” McDougall said. The Catholic Church and the Communist International used the term in the early 20th Century, according to McDougall. Both the Church and the Communist party fretted over it...

A law professor from Georgetown University, Louis Michael Seidman, went on CBS TV and said we should give up on the Constitution: I’ve got a simple idea: Let’s give up on the Constitution. . . . This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today. If we are to take back our own country,...

As one critic told me recently, the classroom is no more rigged against boys than workplaces are rigged against lazy and unfocused workers. But unproductive workers are adults — not 5-year-olds. If boys are restless and unfocused, why not look for ways to help them do better? As a nation, can we afford not to? A few decades ago, when we realized that girls languished behind boys in math and science, we mounted a concerted effort to give them more support, with significant success. Shouldn’t we do the same for boys? When I made this argument in my book “The...

“If we want change to come, we would do well not to look at the sites of power we have no access to – the White House, even the Congress, the Pentagon – these are not the sites we have access to. “But lo and behold, we have absolute access to the community, the school, the neighborhood, the street, the classroom, the workplace, the shop, the farm – why are we ignoring that and saying ‘I hope Obama makes peace.’ Forget about it. He’s not going to do anything if you don’t do something. Our job is movement building.”

My book—which I entitled Sex and God at Yale—shows that Yale’s liberals are still actively working to refashion American politics and culture. But the devil is in the details, and it’s safe to say that there are things happening at Yale today that Buckley could scarcely have even imagined in 1951. While the Yale of Buckley’s book marginalized or undermined religious faith in the classroom, my book tells of a classmate who was given approval to create an art object out of what she claimed was blood and tissue from self-induced abortions. And while the Yale of Buckley’s book was...

The National Association of Scholars (NAS): @ UT Austin & Texas A&M . “We found that all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class, or gender (RCG) social history, an emphasis so strong that it diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history),” the NAS concluded. “The result is that these institutions frequently offered students a less-than-comprehensive picture of U.S. history.” “Despite its denunciation of ‘ideologically partisan approaches,’ the report itself is based on an idiosyncratic and ideologically driven taxonomy of the books, articles, and syllabi of...

Parents of a deaf child named Hunter were told by his Nebraska public preschool that they must change his name because he was in violation of the school district’s weapons policy. To sign his name, the three-year-old crosses his index and middle fingers then wags his hands. This sign apparently appeared to school officials to represent a gun. Grand Island Public Schools’ policy section 8470 — Weapons in Schools states: “Students are forbidden to knowingly and voluntarily possess, handle, transmit or use any instrument in school, on school grounds or at school functions that is a firearm, weapon, or looks...

Continuing their less-than-estimable tradition of publishing cover stories based on premises that range from the debatable to downright laughable, the onetime print magazine Newsweek trolled the nation again on Friday when they declared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is “the most powerful woman in American history.” The argument Newsweek makes when declaring Clinton the “most powerful woman” in America’s 225 plus years of existence rests primarily on her sky-high popularity and her decades of service in government. Though Clinton is popular, the author, Michael Tomasky, notes that “Not everyone is in on this love-fest.” [E]ven the seething hatred has, over...

A pair of professors objected to our coverage of them at the Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting in Boston this year. Near as we can figure out, what they objected to was the fact that we covered them. “Glad you could make it to my paper on 1930s propaganda and popular culture,” Matthew Stratton, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California-Davis wrote in an effort at cordiality that belied what was to come. “I must admit, however, that I’m a bit confused by your account of the panel.” “What exactly in my paper did you find objectionable...

From a history teacher: I am anxiously awaiting the next installment in your Rotten to the Core series. As a history teacher, the Common Core Standards don’t have much of an impact on my teaching (yet – and to my understanding). The whole of this program seems to be shrouded in edu-speak and double talk (which are mostly the same). In addition to the Common Core, we were given an intro to another change coming to my district… and from what I’ve seen, it is spreading to districts across the country. The new model for teaching is Strategic Planning Strategies...

Please tell me if anyone has heard of this "junior classic" “Last spring, my 2nd-grade daughter came home with an extra assignment—a worksheet she hadn’t completed in class for a story called The Selkie Girl,” Jennifer Holladay writes in the Winter 2012-2013 issue of Rethinking Schools.” She brought the book home, too, and it was one I’d never seen before, a Junior Great Books anthology (Series 3, Book 1), published by the nonprofit Great Books Foundation.” “As we settled in, I asked my daughter to tell me about The Selkie Girl. Her rendition gave me pause, so I asked her...

The Common Core English/language arts criteria call for students to spend only half of their class time studying literature, and only 30 percent of their class time by their junior and senior years in high school. Under Common Core, classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives — or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker. Audio and video transcripts, along with “alternative literacies” that are more “relevant” to today’s students (pop song lyrics, for example),...

While guns have taken the brunt of the blame for the recent scourge of mass murders in America, it didn’t take long for the race, class and gender crowd to jump into the fray and proclaim that these tragedies were also caused in part by “frustrated white male privilege.” So says Hugo Schwyzer, a Pasadena City College professor of history and gender, who argues that these particular crimes were all committed by “spoiled, frustrated, disconnected white males who feel ignored or marginalized,” according to The College Fix. What’s more, these murderers all came from bucolic suburban environments, added Schwyzer, who...

it appears that not even foreign language classes on our nation’s campuses are immune to the scourge of radical ideology. Ohio State student Patrick Seaworthy reported in The College Fix that he signed up for a German II class last fall, expecting to learn some of the finer points of German language and conversation. Instead, he quickly discovered that he was the only conservative in a class where “learning German took a back seat to discussions of the prowess of Barack Obama, American narcissism, the virtues of socialism, the sad plight of Chicago’s teachers, and why the U.S. military is...

Joe McGinniss, the author of "Fatal Vision," "Final Vision" and a 2011 Sarah Palin biography, announced that he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer last May. "I was diagnosed in May with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer," he wrote Wednesday on his Facebook page. "There is no cure, so sooner or later it's terminal." --snip-- Most recently, McGinniss profiled Sarah Palin in "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin," which portrayed the former GOP vice presidential candidate in a less than positive manner. After renting a house neighboring Palin's Alaskan home to carry out his research, he emerged with claims...