IN MY OPINION

Ugly truth: Sometimes, torture works

John Kenneth Galbraith once observed that “the enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.” And events have finally caught up with the oft-repeated claim that torture doesn’t work and that it especially didn’t work in tracking down Osama bin Laden.

IN MY OPINION

Murder? Not if you just kill a baby

Nearly a quarter-century has passed since The Los Angeles Times published a piece by the late David Shaw, then its media critic, arguing that the anti-abortion viewpoint didn’t get fair treatment in the news media. Among the anecdotes he used to illustrate his case was that of a Boston Globe reporter who turned in a story on late-term abortions only to have an editor reject a sentence that described the operation “destroying” the fetus by “crushing forming skulls and bones.” Said the editor: “As far as I’m concerned, until that thing is born, it is really no different from a kidney; it is part of the woman’s body.” So to use the word “destroy,” the editor continued “is really to distort the issue.”

IN MY OPINION

Let Pollard finish his sentence

In his book The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten, struggling to define the concept of “chutzpah” to Americans, toyed with a bunch of English expressions: “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ’guts,’ presumption plus arrogance.” In the end, he concluded no single word sufficed. Chutzpah, he wrote was “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

IN MY OPINION

Wars end, but the bills last forever

The past is never dead, as William Faulkner might have written if he were analyzing the federal budget, it’s not even paid for. Did you realize that World War II still costs U.S. taxpayers $5 billion a year? Or that we haven’t closed the financial books on the Civil War yet?

IN MY OPINION

A license to kill — competition

It’s soooooo tempting to start this column with a joke about the first class-action lawsuit on behalf of zombies. But there’s nothing really very funny about the fact that a Minnesota funeral home owner is having to sue his own state government for the right to keep prices low.

Screen gems

The week ahead at the movies and on TV

IN MY OPINION

Glenn Garvin: The left’s science deniers

If this column appeared under the headline, “Massive defeat for the anti-science forces,” you would naturally assume I’m talking about some kind of setback for conservative Republicans, right? And you would be completely wrong.

IN MY OPINION

Glenn Garvin: Super Bowl ads disturbingly delightful

I spent the entire Super Bowl hoping for an equipment malfunction — and no, not on the how-the-hell-does-that-thing-stay-up corset Beyoncé wore during her halftime performance.

Screen gems

The week ahead at the movies and on TV