The prospects for a quick economic recovery dimmed Thursday, with new data showing the economy grew at a slower-than-expected rate this spring despite some oomph from tax rebate checks - and actually shrank late last year. ...more

August 1, 2008

"Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson," by William McKeen (Norton, $27.95) ...more

July 27, 2008

Before moving to Florida 18 years ago, I worked as an account manager for my firm's multimillion account, Wal-Mart. ...more

July 24, 2008

During his days doing stand-up in the 1960s, Bill Cosby recorded a track for one of his comedy albums about the American Revolution. ...more

July 21, 2008

John McCain and Barack Obama vow to reform the nation's defense procurement if elected president, yet each is unwilling to take a firm stand against the skyrocketing cost of a plum White House perk: the new Marine One helicopter. ...more

July 19, 2008

Far too many people are buckling under the strain of trying to run their households as consumer prices rise, home values decline and banks get tougher on letting them use credit to make up the shortfall in their pay. ...more

July 6, 2008

I was sitting in the front dining room at the Valencia Garden. It was lunchtime and, as is usually the case at the Valencia, the room had its share of politicians and business types on hand, wolfing down whatever with yellow rice. ...more

June 25, 2008

When he was running for president, Mike Huckabee had a reputation as a jokester on the campaign trail, especially during the Republican debates. A joke he told last week before about 6,000 members of the National Rifle Association, however, was not funny at all. Indeed, the quip was borderline incendiary. ...more

May 21, 2008

Let's declare Hillary Clinton the president of West Virginia and get on with life. ...more

May 18, 2008

the scourge of earmarked, pork-barrel spending in Congress - across the Alabama River on the Gee's Bend ferry, to one of his old Navy posts at Cecil Field in Jacksonville and to the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa., where he marveled at the new technology. ...more

May 4, 2008