Reading Recommendations: 2006-10-05

• A Portrait of Bush as a Victim of His Own Certitude

  This is a book review, not a genre I often enjoy. But this is a good one. It describes how another conservative has come to see the light. Or has pulled a mea culpa. Or smells money in the shifting political winds. (I remember when Bob Woodward used to be a hero of mine.)
  
  On a related note, in a separate piece, Frank Rich puts it (T$) well: "[His] new book’s title, 'State of Denial,' has a self-referential ring to it."
  
  

• Real Scandals, and Fake Ones

  An editorial from the NY Times, firmly reminding people that being a pedophile has nothing to do with being gay. Probably you already know this, but it's a well-written piece.
  
  

• Pity The Election Year Democrats, For They Know Not What They Do

  Greg Saunders shreds some of the gutless Democrats in the Senate who voted for the torture bill. Devastating, and properly so.
  
  

• Miracle drug of anger

  Garrison, in especially good form. (S$)
  
  

• R. W. Apple Jr., Globe-Trotter for The Times and a Journalist in Full, Dies at 71

  An obit. I didn't know so much about Johnny Apple, but my mother, also a journalist in full, used to find him enraging. This is a nice portrait that resists fawning over a colorful guy with big appetites and a bigger mouth.