I'm always struck by the kids who turn up in New York and LA, and places in between. Chicago. Wanting to do theater, wanting to do independent film. Wanting to break into television or radio.

It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.

The truth is that a lot of plays aren't political at all. In American theater history, political theater has tended to crop up when there's a crisis, a national crisis.

The actor doesn't merely command the stage, he seems to own it by divine right.

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Anything But An Apologist for the Lefties and All of Their Causes.

Someday we'll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9, his first prime-time address to the nation.