By Marc Beauchamp People ask me what I like about FreedomFest. Just got back from my fifth. I think “eclectic” is the word that sums it up best. Mark and Jo Ann Skousen and their team erect a big and welcoming tent every July in Las Vegas. And thank heavens it’s not a “safe space.”…

If you watch only one documentary during this month’s 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, let it be In the Shadow of the Moon. British director David (“The Churchills”) Sington seamlessly tells the story of the U.S. space program —and much more—almost solely through interviews with some of the 24 astronauts who went to the moon. Among them:…

Confession time: I’m hopelessly sentimental about mail, the postman and the post office. It conjures up memories of long-distance romances, draft notices, treasured letters from home received in faraway lands, college admission news, acceptance and rejection letters for jobs or freelance writing gigs. As I write this I’ve got Spotify tuned to one of my…

“Who is this Mueller guy? Should I be concerned?”  Overheard at a cafe in my hometown on April 18, 2019, the day the Russia report by the special counsel was released and the news generated a rare Washington, D.C., headline on the web site of our Gannett-owned daily newspaper in rural northern California. How I…

He called himself a “progressive,” supported the New Deal, and in 1944 campaigned nearly full time on his own dime for Franklin Roosevelt, but Orson Welles probably had more in common with Howard Roark, protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead than FDR and his public works projects. Like Roark, Welles was a genius, a visionary,…