Paul Greenberg

Paul Greenberg

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The Week That Was

By Paul Greenberg (May 23, 2012)

For lovers of freedom the world over and Americans in particular, there can be no doubt about what was the signal event of the week just past: the safe arrival in this land... more

The $2 Billion Lesson

By Paul Greenberg (May 18, 2012)

Anybody need still another argument for reviving the old Glass-Steagall Act (1933-99), with its salutary separation between commercial and investment banking? If so, JPMorgan... more

Gay Marriage and All That

By Paul Greenberg (May 15, 2012)

Let us now praise Barack Obama. The president has finally come out and said what everyone -- except maybe himself -- knew he believed all along: He's for allowing homosexual... more

Revolution as Fashion

By Paul Greenberg (May 14, 2012)

The headline summed up the result of France's presidential election: "Hollande bests Sarkozy/ To claim helm of France." And the photograph that went with it... more

The Great American Guessing Game: Who for Vice President?

By Paul Greenberg (May 13, 2012)

When it come to the Republicans' choice for president this year, it's all over but the shoutin' in Tampa. . . The great hall, the red-white-and-blue balloons, the... more

The Power of One Free Man

By Paul Greenberg (May 12, 2012)

In the fall of 1983 in Moscow, we came in from the cold. Ending our tour of what was then the Soviet Union, a group of editorial writers from across the United States stepped... more

The Dirtiest Campaign?

By Paul Greenberg (May 09, 2012)

Every presidential campaign seems more vicious than the last, probably because it's happening right now, and the public has had four years to forget the slings and arrows of... more

A Few Words For Newt Gingrich

By Paul Greenberg (May 05, 2012)

"All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded." --Attributed to Murray Kempton, among many others.... more

Redemption

By Paul Greenberg (May 03, 2012)

Charles Colson died the other day at 80, a respected and even revered evangelist in the mold of Billy Graham. By the time of his death, he may have been the country's... more

Old Man in a Bar, or: A Meditation Against Entropy

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 27, 2012)

The old man in a rumpled linen suit at the end of the bar stood out like a weed at a garden show. All around him the young couples and swinging singles, so impressionable... more

A Night in the Great Hall

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 24, 2012)

LITTLE ROCK -- It's a beautiful sunset, as always, when seen from the Great Hall of the Clinton Library with a glass of wine in your hand and the chamber music about to... more

The Decline of Scandal

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 19, 2012)

It's another sign of the blah times: The sordid details of our public figures' none too private scandals have grown beyond boring. By now, scandals have become as repetitive,... more

Repeal That Infernal Tax Code

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 17, 2012)

"April is the cruelest month. . . ."--T. S. Eliot, [ital The Waste Land [unital] Ronald Reagan said it back in 1983: "Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly... more

Pomp and Circumstance

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 13, 2012)

It'll be quite a ceremony -- you could even call it a spectacle -- at Fayetteville, Ark., come Sunday. It seems Bill Clinton is due back at the University of Arkansas,... more

It's Over - It's Been Over

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 11, 2012)

The race for the Republican presidential nomination has been over for some time, and now Rick Santorum has finally admitted it -- and let it be over. At last. He's run a... more

Easter Interview: The Woman Who Was There

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 08, 2012)

  Call me Mary -- not the one who bore Him, but she who was borne up by him, little did I know it at the time. And you? You say you're some sort of scribe.... more

Another line crossed

By Paul Greenberg (Apr 04, 2012)

Something happens to ethics when it becomes a specialty. It becomes professionalized, certified, rarefied. It becomes something besides ethics. It becomes expertise, not... more

The Cynicism of It

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 30, 2012)

The president of the United States really needs a minder. Or at least an aide who'll always tell him when the microphone that's catching his every embarrassing word is open,... more

A Little Perspective, Please

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 29, 2012)

To read this week's press coverage, you'd think not just a landmark Supreme Court case was upon us, but a jurisprudential Armageddon. The moment of truth has arrived, the... more

Mitt Romney's Big Lead -- And Big Problem

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 27, 2012)

That would have been a big story out of Illinois last week if only Mitt Romney had lost as big as he won. It would have meant the Republican front-runner wasn't the... more

What's in a Name -- If It Keeps Changing?

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 27, 2012)

It was inevitable that Little Rock's national airport would be renamed the Clinton National Airport. The sound principle of not naming public facilities for prominent... more

Appeasement in Fast Time

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 21, 2012)

"I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air." --Margaret Thatcher It's not just Pyongyang's repeated promises that have proven worthless but Washington's. Each... more

In Search of Celebrity

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 20, 2012)

It happens every few years or whenever John Hinckley makes the news again. You may remember the name, unfortunately. He's the wannabe Lee Harvey Oswald who almost killed a... more

Last Man Standing: This Week it's Rick Santorum

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 16, 2012)

Another week, another GOP presidential primary to note before moving on to the next inconclusive one. And so it goes on the long trail a-winding to exhaustion or Tampa or... more

Son of Climategate

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 15, 2012)

It's the latest chapter in a continuing saga: Still another climateer has been caught monkeying with the evidence. All to prove that man-made Global Warming/Climate Change... more

Good for Eric Holder: The education of an attorney general

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 14, 2012)

Can this be Eric Holder, our Eric Holder, the same attorney general of the United States who used to snub military law, who set out to close the military prison and courts at... more

It Was Super, Kind Of

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 08, 2012)

After his last comeback of so many (now he's down, now he's up, now he's both) Mitt Romney's campaign proved it was alive by eking out a win in the Michigan... more

Program notes, Or: Lutoslawski in Little Rock

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 07, 2012)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- First comes the talk. It can't be helped, much like the announcers' chitchat on KLRE, the classical music station here in the middle of Arkansas. It's a... more

Wouldn't it be nice?

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 02, 2012)

Have you got health insurance? I do. Wouldn't it be nice if everybody did? Just think: No more worries about losing your health care if you lose your job, or just get a... more

The Pause That Refreshes

By Paul Greenberg (Mar 02, 2012)

It was a last minute save. Mitt Romney managed to finish a couple of percentage points ahead of the latest non-Romney -- Rick Santorum -- in his native state's Republican... more

Watch That Speed Limit

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 29, 2012)

It was big news last fall. Not just nationally or internationally but for the universe. The eminent scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research,... more

Words Words Words: More Statements, Less Meaning

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 27, 2012)

There are some phrases that come to mean the opposite of what they say. For example, Never Again! That vow is uttered after every genocidal campaign makes the news. It... more

Spare That Post Office

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 24, 2012)

The list of those due to be executed is long and ominous. There were 179 names on it just here in Arkansas -- names like Carthage. Casscoe. Columbus, New Hope, Witts... more

Thy Life's a Miracle

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 22, 2012)

It's really not fair or accurate to say this administration has declared war on religion. Its policy isn't that clear. If it has one. And if it does, that policy keeps... more

Divide et Impera: Another High-Budget Production

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 20, 2012)

It should be coming soon to a campaign stop near you. Watch for it: Still another high-budget, low-content production by the same masterful hand that gave you shows like... more

Gobbledegook Galore: How to Have Fun on a Budget

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 18, 2012)

"The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan." -- Ronald Reagan It's hard to imagine how anyone can take President Obama's latest budget seriously, including... more

Happy Days Are Here Again

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 15, 2012)

Happy days are here again The skies above are clear again So let's sing a song of cheer again Happy days are here again No wonder the Titanic became... more

God in the Media

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 13, 2012)

It was only a matter of time in this Age of the Poll that some mastermind at a political headquarters would decide to ask the almighty American public to pass judgment on God... more

A Blank Canvas Can Be a Beautiful Thing

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 11, 2012)

Congress finally did something right. Or rather it did nothing at all, which was just the right thing to do in these wasteful circumstances. It let the ethanol tax credit... more

A Moment of Clarity -- Thanks to the Race for the Cure

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 08, 2012)

Those who run the Komen foundation, and make a mighty good thing of it, too, sound confused in the worst way: morally confused. Formally dedicated to finding a cure for... more

Economics 101: Change Happens

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 06, 2012)

A presidential campaign is the health of economic illiteracy. Every four years, ignorance comes into its quadrennial own. There are voters to mobilize, resentments to stoke,... more

Mitt Romney wins, but where's the magic?

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 03, 2012)

The results in Florida were even better for Mitt Romney than most of the wildly swinging polls said they would be. With 100 percent of the vote in the Republican primary in,... more

The Next War

By Paul Greenberg (Feb 01, 2012)

It happens every between-the-wars period. It happened in the 1920s and '30s, then in the post-war 1940s. ... Now it's happening again in the 2010s. War-weariness sets in. A... more

Just Read the Words

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 30, 2012)

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the... more

The State of the Union -- A Free Translation

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 26, 2012)

For those fortunate souls who didn't have to sit through the president's State of the Union speech Tuesday night out of a sense of duty, or maybe just masochism, here is a... more

The Curtail Falls on the Tragedy of Joe Paterno

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 25, 2012)

Sumday morning the word began to filter out. First it was a rumor, then the emails began arriving. Had the media jumped the gun again? But then the family released a... more

Two Brothers

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 23, 2012)

We sit in classrooms listening to another boring lecture. Or we take the kids to school on the way to work. Or climb in the pick-up truck for another day at the construction... more

There Goes Another One

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 19, 2012)

Oh, dear. Still another Iranian nuclear scientist has met with a fatal accident. Accidents will happen, especially in the Middle East and to Iran's nuclear... more

The Use of Heroes: Lee's Birthday, 2012

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 18, 2012)

Let's hear it for The Usable Past. That phrase was much in vogue among historians not long ago, and may still be. Historians, too wanted to be part of the practical arts.... more

The Unsinkable Mitt

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 12, 2012)

There were no surprises in the New Hampshire presidential primary. The voting results followed expectations and the polls. Win, place and show -- Romney, Paul and Huntsman --... more

The Idol and the Republic

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 12, 2012)

It is that time again, mixing mourning and gratitude, to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. And now we can gather at his still new memorial in... more

Occupy Everything!

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 11, 2012)

Who says Occupy Wall Street hasn't accomplished something specific? You can put a number on it, or at least The Associated Press did. Talk about redistributing the... more

The GOP Choice: New Cast, Old Script

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 09, 2012)

After what seemed an eternity of debates, the New Hampshire primary has whirred into life. Like a great creaky old grandfather clock striking the hour -- a reminder not only... more

The Comedy Club

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 05, 2012)

It seems former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has undertaken a second career as a stand-up comic. He's now switching occupations the way he once switched political parties. At... more

A Star Is Born

By Paul Greenberg (Jan 03, 2012)

Who is this Richard Kinder, and why is what he says both so funny and so true? He's the 66-year-old CEO of Kinder Morgan, Inc., who at the moment is trying to create the... more