A Judge's Verdict on Israel

Countries exist, and whether they're the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus or China, no one doubts their basic right to continue their existence—unless it is Israel. Roy Altman, a young federal judge in Miami, has been lecturing about Israel widely on campuses since October 7. Israel on Trial distills his rebuttals of the six claims he has most often encountered that aim to undermine and delegitimize the presently constituted Jewish state.

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Bloomswary

If your ideal critic is someone who is learned, widely read, with the ability to concoct new ideas, and possessed of a powerful memory, Harold Bloom may well be your man. Bloom has written about more writers than perhaps any critic in the modern era. He came up with the idea of anxiety caused by literary influence and put forth the notion that a woman wrote the Bible. He is said to have memorized Wordsworth’s poem "The Prelude," a mere 736 pages in its Penguin edition. Had I lived in New Haven, where Harold Bloom taught at Yale, I should have called him in to recite "The Prelude" as a sure-fire way to end dull parties.

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Orwell Unfiltered

All Souls, the blue riband Oxford graduate college, used to be famous for its fellowship exams. A particular highlight was the General Paper, in which candidates were often presented with a solitary abstract noun ("Hope," "Charity," etc.) or an especially thorny epigram ("Freedom and equality are ultimately incompatible") and invited to "discuss." Well, an All Souls General Paper here in 2026 could usefully begin with the question, "What is meant by the adjective ‘Orwellian’?"

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Daddy Issues

In her new book, Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives, Darby Saxbe argues that there is a lot of variation in our own country, around the world, and through history in terms of how much men participate in the daily activities of parenthood. Saxbe is a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California, where she runs the NeuroEndocrinology of Social Ties lab.

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6 Things We Learned From the Obama Center Opening Ceremony

The Barack Obama Presidential Center is finally open to the public. The Obamas threw themselves an invite-only launch party on Thursday with all of their celebrity friends. All the living former presidents showed up with their spouses. Joe Biden was also there.

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REVIEW: ‘Toy Story 5’

The original Toy Story is not a movie about children. It’s about envy, status anxiety, and a workplace that threatens to become toxic. The boss happens to be a little boy, the workplace is his room, and the envy and status anxiety are the tribulations of Woody the Cowboy. His standing as the little boy’s favorite toy, and therefore the most important worker in the room, is threatened by the introduction of Buzz Lightyear, the boy’s new Christmas present. Bombastic and humorless, Buzz does not know he is a toy, and yet he enchants everyone in the room besides Woody—who undertakes a plot to get rid of Buzz that leads the others to believe he is a murderer.

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Pritzker Adds $800 Million a Year in New Taxes to Already High-Tax Illinois

The governor of Illinois, Democrat J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire Hyatt hotel heir who is a possible 2028 presidential candidate, is facing sharp criticism after signing into law a state budget that adds $800 million a year in new taxes to a state already in the worst third of the 50 states when it comes to imposing tax burdens.

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James Talarico, Who Says His 'Faith' Requires Him To Oppose Super PACs, Is Using His Campaign Website To Give Them Direction—And They’re Taking It

One month before Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico said that his "faith" requires him to reject big money in politics—he likened it to Jesus Christ resisting the Devil's temptation while fasting in the wilderness—his campaign updated a buried page on its website that tacitly coordinates with super PACs, laying out instructions about what media markets to run ads in, where to send mailers, and what messages to include in them. Lo and behold, two days after the update, a super PAC led by Talarico's former chief of staff began running ads that followed the campaign's exact instructions, a Washington Free Beacon review found.

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Arizona Democrat JoAnna Mendoza Now Claims She's Not a Millionaire After All, Drops Her Net Worth by 93 Percent in Updated Disclosure

JoAnna Mendoza, the presumptive Democratic nominee in an Arizona House race that is one of the tightest in the country, has drastically reduced her personal net worth in a new financial disclosure. The filing came one day after the Washington Free Beacon reported that she's a millionaire political consultant with ties to billionaire liberal megadonor George Soros.

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Socialist House Hopeful Darializa Avila Chevalier, Citing Her ‘Black Queer Feminist Lens,’ Demanded End To Rule Barring Violent Criminals From Public Housing

A socialist candidate for New York’s 13th Congressional District has called for revoking a rule that keeps violent criminals out of New York City public housing.

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