Speaking of National Review Online , permit me a shameless plug for these people. For me it has become required reading, because I find the writing to be first rate, and the personalities of the contributors (like Jonah, Derb and Nordlinger) compel me to keep coming back. Their blog, The Corner, in which the editors and contributors mix fun with lively debate and off-the-wall intellectual exercise, has become a daily habit for me as well.
I'm not sure how they accomplish it (the Corner is part of it) but there is a sort of "family" feel to the group of writers that comes through to the regular reader. I just know I feel it's worth the time I spend to, as they say, "read it all"...
...especially Victor Davis Hanson, who is worth the price of admission all by himself...again today. An excerpt:
There is a Potemkin phoniness to this war to come. We live in a world of images broadcast immediately into our living rooms without commentary — or, indeed, any intellectual context at all. Thus, because a Tariq Aziz — a really murderous, awful man — can get on a plane to the Vatican without his holster, he looks to the ignorant as if he were a jet-setting, press-conference-convening statesman like Tony Blair. Dan Rather sits across from a mass murderer in a Western tie and suit and questions the tyrant as if he is interviewing the head of the local school board.