| Book World: Selected letters of William Styron are a trove of amusement Jan 3rd 2013, 02:50 As in the decade after World War I, when the great American modernists — Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein and others — frolicked on the Left Bank, during the 1950s Paris was again the place to be. In Europe following the success of his 1951 first novel "Lie Down in Darkness," William Styron (1925-2006) drank and partied and became friends with George Plimpton, Truman Capote, Peter Matthiessen, James Jones, Irwin Shaw and many other young writers. He was there at the founding of the Paris Review and was among the earliest authors to be honored with one of the now-famous "Writers at Work" interviews. In Italy, he met a woman named Rose Burgunder, who became his wife and is the editor, with R. Blakeslee Gilpin, of these "Selected Letters." Read full article >>   |  | Defined by a Sandy sidestep Jan 3rd 2013, 01:30 The end-of-term reviews of John Boehner's House speakership are in, and they aren't pretty. "The conduct of the Republican leadership was disgraceful, it was indefensible and it was immoral." "There was a betrayal." Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Congress gives out end-of-year perks to interest groups Jan 3rd 2013, 01:27 CONGRESS, APPARENTLY, couldn't end the year without showering billions on a handful of interest groups, some of which you probably didn't even know existed. The Post's Brad Plumer points out that the "fiscal cliff" bill that passed Congress on Tuesday contained a bonanza for single-issue lobbyists, extending supports for Puerto Rican rum distillers, Hollywood studios, tribal-lands coal, electric-scooter makers and other corporate interests that Congress will subsidize through the tax code for another year or two. It's easy to blame some combination of policy inertia and congressional distraction for the largely rote reauthorization of some of these items; most lawmakers simply didn't have the capacity to think much about the relatively small tax loophole for NASCAR racetracks. Yet that's not true of some of the biggest-ticket items, which have been the subject of reform discussions all year long. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Iranian nuclear talks need to come to a close Jan 3rd 2013, 01:26 AS THE YEAR begins, the Obama administration and its diplomatic partners are expecting the renewal of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, after a six-month hiatus. But there is scant indication that a breakthrough is in store. The international coalition, composed of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, intends to offer a slightly modified version of the deal Tehran rejected last June, with the faint hope that the pain of economic sanctions might have caused Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to soften. But there is no public sign of that: In fact, Iran has been slow to agree to a new meeting and, according to the New York Times, did not respond to a post-election feeler by the Obama administration on direct, bilateral talks. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Virginia Supreme Court should revisit pretrial disclosure rules Jan 3rd 2013, 01:26 IN POPULAR LORE, good trial lawyers — think Perry Mason and his ilk — never ask a question to which they don't already know the answer. In real life, it happens all the time. Prosecutors in some states are notorious for practicing "trial by ambush," springing testimony in court to which the defense has had no previous access. Thus hamstrung, defense lawyers sometimes grope for exculpatory nuggets in cross-examination. Read full article >>   | | Obama missing in action Jan 3rd 2013, 01:25 It would be hard to imagine a more dispiriting prelude to a new presidential term than this week's sorry "fiscal cliff" deal to defer (and perhaps multiply) the nation's financial problems. After President Obama failed to negotiate a serious "grand bargain," he had to be rescued with a mini-bargain brokered by Vice President Biden, the loquacious master of old-time, cracker-barrel politics. Read full article >> | | Our decadent democracy Jan 3rd 2013, 01:25 Connoisseurs of democratic decadence can savor a variety of contemporary dystopias. Because familiarity breeds banality, Greece has become a boring horror. Japan, however, in its second generation of stagnation is fascinating. Once, Japan bestrode the world, jauntily buying Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach. Now Japanese buy more adult diapers than those for infants. Read full article >> | | Greg Sargent: Happy Hour Roundup Jan 2nd 2013, 23:30 * Get ready for another debt ceiling showdown with Republicans: The party's caucus in the House will discuss its debt ceiling strategy at its retreat in Williamsburg, Va., in a couple of weeks, according to a top Republican aide, who said it was determined to insist again on spending cuts that equal the increase in the amount the country can borrow. "The speaker told the president to his face that everything you want in life comes with a price. That doesn't change here," the Republican aide said. "I don't think he has any choice." Read full article >>   | | Jonathan Bernstein: In (partial) defense of John Boehner Jan 2nd 2013, 22:38 This is pretty simple: the problem for Republicans right now isn't John Boehner, and replacing him wouldn't do them any good. The problem is House Republicans. With the election for Speaker looming, there are plenty of people complaining that Boehner is a weak Speaker, unable to discipline his conference and force them to vote with him. But that's a real misunderstanding of the role of any Speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi was an excellent Speaker, but that wasn't for the most part because she convinced her caucus to vote with her; it was because she was quite good at coordinating the Democratic agenda. In particular, Pelosi was extremely effective during the historic 111th Congress, in 2009-2010, during a period of unified government, when Democrats were pursuing legislation that had broad Democratic backing. It's true that on the margins a Speaker may be able to bargain with reluctant Members to get their votes, but if she insists -- or is forced by divided government -- to bring up bills that the bulk of her caucus doesn't want to vote for, things aren't going to go well. Read full article >> | | Jennifer Rubin: Why is Hagel still in the mix? Jan 2nd 2013, 20:15 Briefly lost in the tumult surrounding the fiscal cliff battle is the potential nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary. With liberal gay activists, key Republican senators and a bevy of pro-Israel groups vocally opposed to the former Nebraska senator, it is worthwhile to take a step back and answer some more basic questions. Read full article >>   | | The cliff deal is better than it looks Jan 2nd 2013, 19:00 To be deemed a serious analyst at the moment seems to require a lot of hand-wringing and sneering over how awful Congress looked the past few days as it rushed a "fiscal cliff" deal into law. So permit me to burn my membership card in the League of Commentators and Pundits. Read full article >> | | Jennifer Rubin: George W. Bush's legacy grows more impressive Jan 2nd 2013, 17:00 The retention of 98 percent of the Bush tax cuts by the most liberal president to hold office reminds us that a mere four years after leaving office, George W. Bush has a legacy that is becoming more impressive with time. Kevin Hasset of the American Enterprise Institute puts it this way: "After everything settles, people of both parties will have to agree that this was a big win for Bush. Almost all of Bush's favored tax policies have become a permanent part of the tax code. The top rate is higher, but marginal tax rates on 'rich' people with incomes below $400,000 are even lower than they would have been if Bush's tax cuts had never passed." He emphasizes: "It is especially important that dividends will probably never again be taxed as ordinary income. Even Republicans in the House were against Bush's dividend tax proposal to begin with. Now, even Democrats agree that dividends should be taxed less." So much for Warren Buffett's secretary. Read full article >>   | |
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