When the subject is the war on terrorism, Nada Bakos should know what she’s talking about.  Ms. Bakos was a CIA agent who was assigned as a targeting officer in the agency’s counter-terrorism center during the Iraq War.  Her principal target was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who orchestrated the most heinous of attacks against Sunni Muslims […]

In 1969, I was investigated for engaging in racial discrimination.  At the time, I was a green second lieutenant in the Air Force, serving as the Food Service Officer on McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. The charge of employment discrimination was brought against me by a black civil service employee who had applied […]

Donna Tartt’s third novel, “The Goldfinch,” is one of the most acclaimed works of literary fiction from 2013, chosen as one of the ten  best books of the year on more than a few such lists and garnering the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  It also spent over thirty weeks on the New York Times’ best […]

Had I not known better, I would have thought I was reading a spoof in The Onion (the online news magazine that publishes false stories that at first blush could be real).  The headline was dramatic enough: “Black Holes Inch Ahead to Violent Cosmic Union.” Egad!  That sounded serious.  The article in question appeared in […]