C. John Sommerville

Among the many notable decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in the area of religion was the 1963 case Abington Township School District v. Schempp, which held that tax-supported schools were only allowed to teach about religion. Meaning, of course, that government schools could not directly teach . . . . Continue Reading »

A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures By Ben Bradlee Simon & Schuster, 514 pages, $27.50 Ben Bradlee, celebrity editor at the Washington Post , has a lot to answer for. And I don’t mean for bringing down Nixon’s presidency, for which he modestly disclaims credit (saying that . . . . Continue Reading »

Strange as it may seem in a country positively flooded with the commodity, we don’t always understand what News is. News is what has happened since yesterday’s paper or broadcast. It is that daily budget of information that a person needs in order to be “informed,” to feel tuned in . . . . Continue Reading »