California has found a formula for ending the partisan warfare that once paralyzed its government: Get rid of one of the parties, in this case, the Republican. The state's famously dysfunctional government now hums with calm efficiency.
Democrats there hold a supermajority in the state Legislature, making it well-nigh impossible for Republicans to gum up their plans. The governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat, as well.
I never cared much for the tarted-up Burberry. The upscale British clothier sells its wares at prices for which one might reasonably demand a classic style lasting through several monarchies. But that's just me talking. Burberry is said to have turned its traditionalist label around thanks to fashion innovation. So that's just me talking.
Apple Inc. has hired Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts to apply her fashion smarts to updating its 400 stores and online shopping experience. On this I feel better equipped to predict success or failure.
A number of tech businesses are now getting mixed up with fashion. That's a dangerous trend, for tech.
The baby boomers are not dead yet. Someday they will be dead, as will be Generation X, the millennials and all the above' great-great-grandchildren -- barring, of course, a medical cure for mortality.
But you'd think the large cohort born between 1946 and 1964 were already consigned to American memory, given man members' oozy nostalgia and declarations of surrender to younger folk. If your time warp is 1968, that's your call. But 2013 is also an interesting time.
Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society. It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly tea party faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.
The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.
In an era of finicky foodies and celebrity chefs, Marcella Hazan never troubled herself with the rough-and-tumble of branding. Not sexy like Nigella Lawson, not colorful like Emeril Lagasse, not adorable like Rachael Ray -- not even eccentric like Julia Child -- Hazan nailed Italian cooking in a uniquely grumpy way.
Note how tea party politicians routinely start their remarks with "The American people want." And what "the American people want" conveniently coincides with their ideological preferences.
Not long ago, an important New England Patriots game failed to appear on my cable lineup. There was a way to pay extra for it, but the heck with that.
The amazing story of Pei-Shen Qian has given the art world pause. A struggling Chinese immigrant, Qian painted fake works attributed to the stars of abstract expressionism -- Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell.
Voices from right field are explaining why they're justified in threatening the United States with default if Congress does not defund Obamacare. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel said on Sunday chat TV, "There isn't one poll that shows that Americans approve, as a majority, of this health care law."
To the rising pile of shooting rampages, Americans can now add the rapid-fire murder of 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. It is a sign of our remarkable times that this horrid deed seems to pale next to the massacre of 20 schoolchildren in suburban Connecticut last December.
The week opened nicely with news that Lawrence Summers had taken his name out of the running for the Federal Reserve chairman job. We won't be subjected to the notoriously unpleasant Summers denigrating those who would distinguish between Wall Street's interests and the country's. Still more gratifying is that Democrats, and not just the liberal ones, put the kibosh on President Obama's mystifying desire to put this Wall Street-Washington hybrid in charge of our central banking system.
Feeling aggrieved over reports of widespread government surveillance? Feeling guilty about not feeling aggrieved? Relax. There's little you can do about the revelations.
The weekend obits toasted two American originals who died in their 90s. Both dedicated their many hours to preserving bygone technologies -- in one case typewriters and in the other vinyl records. Both would have closed shop sooner were it not for young hipsters, raised on the digital, seeing novelty and beauty in the great inventions of the mechanical age.
Thousands of Chinese are fleeing to the United States. We are not talking about impoverished peasants hiding in cargo containers. We're talking about millionaires flying first class and buying condos in the choicest ZIP codes. A big reason for this relocation, real estate agents say, is a desire for America's clean air, as opposed to China's suffocating smog.
A little infidelity, a little cheating, is OK in a marriage -- or even protective of it -- if the sneaking is just about money. Note the emphasis on "little."
Indianapolis offers the full urban deal: great architecture, hot restaurants, famous museums and a walkable downtown. But it also has had one of the worst panhandler problems I've seen. At almost every street corner, it seemed, someone was squeezing you for money.
Moderate Republicans are, were, good things. I use the past tense "were" because as they became rarities, the centrists' chief function was preserving majorities in Congress for their radicalized party.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained at London's Heathrow Airport for nine hours -- no waterboarding or electric shocks, just pointed questions and confiscation of David Michael Miranda's computer gear. That prompted Greenwald to threaten Britain with more of his writings.
On immigration, the Republican Party is trapped in two trains of thought, each speeding along the wrong track. At the tea party end, there's absolute resistance to normalizing the status of illegal immigrants. On the cheap-labor side, there's this big push to admit as many unskilled immigrants as possible.
During the 2001 assault on the World Trade Center, I was trapped in a train under Manhattan for hours. As news of the collapsing towers, the attack on the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania filtered down to the passengers, the conductor kept telling us this tunnel was the safest place we could be. Meanwhile, the tunnels were being searched for explosives.
