From Glenn Greenwald’s “A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency” (Salon: 20 June 2007):
One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness — who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a [...]
Posted on October 11th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, politics | 1 Comment »
From Jay McInerney’s “White Man at the Door” (The New Yorker [4 February 2002] 57):
[Matthew Johnson, head of Fat Possum Records, has] got a damaged lung, bad teeth, a couple of hernias, and a back catalogue of death threats. His dentist once held up a toothbrush and asked him if he’d ever seen one, to [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, fiction, language & literature | Comments Off
From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (23):
[Lincoln's] first speech was made at a country auction. Twenty-three years old, he stood on a box, wearing a frayed straw hat, a calico shirt, and pantaloons held up by a single-strap suspender. As he was about to speak, a fight broke out in the [...]
Posted on April 16th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From The New York Times‘ “1 Cafe, 1 Gas Station, 2 Roads: America’s Emptiest County“:
At last count (by Sheriff Hopper toting it up in his head), 16 people make Mentone their home and 55 others are spread throughout the rest of Loving County’s 645 square miles of parched, salty West Texas grassland and rattlesnakes  [...]
Posted on February 25th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, politics | Comments Off