Free Republic

Patrick J. Buchanan's new contribution to the flourishing genre of World War II revisionism, should appear in the same season as Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke." Never has there been such a clear demonstration of the way ideological extremes tend to converge. Messrs. Baker and Buchanan probably could not stand to be in the same room for five minutes. The former is to the left of most Democrats, the latter to the right of most Republicans. When they look back to the 1930s, Mr. Baker's role models are the Quakers and pacifists who believed it was better to lie down for...

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the release of the Clinton tax data last week was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance in 2001 for what would become his autobiography, My Life. As even the New York Times noticed, this was significantly “larger than previously thought” — or, more exactly, than previously reported. For example, an August 7, 2001 article in the Times puts the figure vaguely at “over $10 million.” A Wall Street Journal report from the following day cites a more concrete figure of “close...

When I was eight years old, school was let out early. The teachers were inexplicably upset, several were crying. But we students weren't. We were happy to be suddenly released. I didn't begin to be troubled until I got home and saw that my mother was crying too. "Honey, I have to tell you something," she said. "The president's been shot." "Dead?" She nodded. An hour later, my father came home, looking terrible. This I did not quite understand. My father loved to laugh at mean things he would read about the president in columns written by someone named Buckley....

Alfred A. Knopf Publishing House (a subsidiary of Random House) has recently published a book entitled Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker.  This book tells the story of two high school friends discussing the explicit details of numerous possible assasination plots against the President, not just some fictional President, but our serving President George Walker Bush.In this book, two high school friends discuss numerous potential plans to actually murder President Bush, among them saws, boulders, and the standard bullets.The premise is forgiving though.  After expressing his outrage over Iraq, the main character concludes, "I'm going to kill that bastard."Although amazon.com has no description for...

In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush. It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Flush with the headline-generating success of "My Life," by Bill Clinton, Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18. In the book, two men -- Ben...

In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush. It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are actually made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Flush with the headline-generating success of "My Life," by Bill Clinton, Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18.

In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush.It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are actually made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Flush with the headline-generating success of "My Life," by Bill Clinton, Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18. Though it is against the law to...