BY FROMA HARROP Fifty years ago this month, a lawyer living in a posh New York suburb with his former model wife was being investigated for embezzlement. Julian Andrew Frank of Westport, CT, took out nearly $900,000 in life insurance and then, investigators believed, boarded a National Airlines plane with a bomb and blew it […]

BY KAREN WEBB If there were a guy in charge of the department that oversees the screening, George W. Bush would have given him a...

BY SUSAN ESTRICH In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s ideologists pronounced his attack on the welfare state an expression of the “new federalism.” It wasn’t that they were against helping the poor and the needy, but that the federal government was the wrong branch of government to do it. Even the president talked about it. People, myself […]

BY JOE CONASON The latest atrocity attempted by Al-Qaeda seems to be yet another example of history reprising a great tragedy as farce. What make the misadventure of the underpants bomber on Flight 253 seem darkly ridiculous, however, is not only his incompetence in setting himself on fire, but the hysteria and hypocrisy of the […]

BY FROMA HARROP With polls showing that Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd would probably lose to most everyone running against him, the Democrat’s decision not to seek re-election is a relief to all but his Republican opponents. A Senate seat from true-blue Connecticut isn’t something Democrats should have to worry about. They’ve already got enough on […]