In a few days, Amanda Knox will either be set free or ordered to remain in jail, from where she will most certainly file another, final appeal against her murder conviction. Whatever the Italian appellate judge and jury decide to do with her and her onetime boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, one...

The man New Yorkers elected as their latest Sheriff of Wall Street seems so much smaller than one expects a man in such an outsize job to be, sitting behind his huge desk flanked by a potted rubber plant on one side and the state flag on the other. Behind...

Choppers securing the Hudson for today's 9/11 commemoration jolted us awake at dawn.

I'm among those who won't be participating in the ceremonies downtown. For one, I have no interest in sharing any part of my city with President Bush, whose multi-trillion-dollar, needless folly of a war with Iraq did...

Born in the 1980s and '90s, the right-wing girl Millennials grew up at a time when Reagan was almost ancient history, second-wave feminism was fighting grandma's battles, and the background noise was the whir of talking heads debating whether oral sex was sex at all, courtesy of Bill Clinton. With...

I won't pile on top of the esteemed gentleman from Brooklyn-Queens today, much as he might enjoy it. But he has posed -- make that hoisted to half-mast -- some sexual-politics issues that deserve airing at least as much as those gray boxer briefs.

A former (male) editor...

Articles in the New York Times today and in the New Yorker this week confirm a fact of life I've suspected for a while. In our PC world, misogyny, unlike racism or gay-bashing, is in fact the last allowable taboo.

The Times piece today, Section A, page 22, for...

In 1799, the French artist Vivant Denon, accompanying a team of scientists traveling to Egypt with Napoleon (who excused his invasion with the logic that he was bringing democracy to the Arabs) was touring some ancient sites along the upper Nile when he came across an 8-year-old girl in severe...

Yesterday morning I amused myself twittering about how the House Republicans would prefer the sick to die homeless in tents. At about the same time, a crowing blast-emailed press release landed in my inbox, cheering the Republicans. It was from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free market think tank...

With apologies for being late to the Freedom book party:

Reviewers who called it "a masterpiece" and "a work of total genius," had me intrigued, but I'm glad I waited for a frugal friend, who bought the book at Costco, to finish reading and send it to me, rather than...

If anyone still doubted, or hadn't noticed, that misogyny is the fundamental pillar on which radical Islam is based, the news that poison gas was pumped into girls' schools in Afghanistan, likely by the Taliban, ought to confirm it.

The story, first reported in the U.S. in...

I happen to be in Portland, Ore., this week, where hell's magnet is pulling another hero down, down, down.

There's a lot to do in Portland besides get a below-the-belt massage. In the ten blocks around this hotel, there's the Oregon history museum, art galleries, fantastic restaurants. Anyone can ride...

I'm not usually a Miami girl, but I do love my Florida.

I used to run off to the Keys around my birthday in early springtime every year and check into the cheapest motel I could find. For native Chicagoans like me, after the long freeze, any old efficiency will...

The tragic images of dying, oil-drenched animals and the underwater spew in the Gulf are sickening. They make us feel ashamed to be human, certainly ashamed to be driving our cars.
There is one upside to the unfolding disaster, though: at least we don't have to drink it.

What some people call the clash of civilizations is not a fight between Islam and the West but between science and faith. The religious rightists in America may want us to believe that they are different from the theocrats of Iran and the fundamentalist of Al Qaeda who teach their...

Shortly before 8 p.m. last Halloween in New York City, a 6'7" tall man grabbed and choked his live-in girlfriend, stripped her clothing off and smashed her against a mirror. He then took two phones away from her, to prevent her calling police. When she finally fled and got police...

Roberto Saviano is only 30 years old, a slight, balding man of average height. There's a hipster edge to him, his black clothes, three thick silver rings, a cool day's growth of beard. He is young, famous and easy on the eyes, an Italian superstar.

You won't find him...

What if Fox News ran the USA? Some people think that's already happened, but in Italy a human experiment has been underway for three decades, culminating in a mass television culture that degrades women and allows a 1950s style "Mad Man" to party on with almost no checks. Some Italians...

Genius and the lure of young flesh.

Until recently, in the western world, the right of a Great Man to man-handle a reluctant, pliant young woman was simply not questioned. With the advent of sexual harassment laws, the old order is under attack. It won't go down easily. Novels...

VENICE - The two surprise winners at the Venice Film Festival represent the yin and yang of the modern Middle East. Conquering both Michael Moore and George Clooney, "Lebanon," winner of the Golden Lion is a gory anti-war punch in the face, an autobiographical account of the writer-director Samuel Maoz's...

Can anyone remember what happened the last time a left-winger brought a loaded assault rifle to display in public within sight of a George W. Bush presidential event?

No, we can't, because college kids with backpacks sporting John Kerry stickers got thrown in jail for their menacing presence at Bush...