No Straw Men

Helms realized early on that it looked better to position yourself as a foe of big government than as a defender of state-created privileges.

Payne created downforeveryoneorjustme.com, as in, “Down for everyone, or just me?” It lets visitors type in a Web address and see whether a site is generally inaccessible or whether the problem is with their own connection.

The 32-year-old Castro was refused a meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower, and after leaving the United States, he returned to Cuba and joined forces with the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev.

Poor people who want public benefits must give up their privacy. Investigators from the San Diego district attorney’s office make unannounced visits to the homes of people applying for welfare, poking around in garbage cans, medicine chests and laundry.

Tom DeLay fell from grace not because he was a Christian—a cheap and offensive rationalization—but because he was a politician in the worst sense, betraying principles for power.

When it comes to lobbying, Google does not intend to repeat the mistake that its rival Microsoft made a decade ago.

The Sopranos creator David Chase turned us all into Tony’s shrink, then duped us into believing he could be saved. It took us eight seasons to figure out we’d been had.

The museum in Russia has mounted an unusual exhibit of the different ways that students have cheated over the years in Russia. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights some of the exhibit’s more ingenious items.