John Updike, 76, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction whose novels and short stories exposed an undercurrent of ambivalence and disappointment in small-town, middle-class America, died Tuesday of lung cancer in a hospice near his home in Beverly Farms, Mass. ...more

January 28, 2009

Too many people have been stricken by obsessive materialism. ...more

January 9, 2009

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can't just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: "You recently said paying taxes is patriotic. In middle-class America, where I have been all my life, that is not considered patriotic." ...more

October 9, 2008