Washington — When Paula White, who’s often described as President Donald Trump’s personal spiritual adviser, railed in her invocation at his reelection kickoff rally last week against “every demonic network who has aligned itself” against Trump, her words bothered me, personally and ...
Mo Udall, the legendary Democratic congressman from Arizona, was brutally candid about his party’s bad habit of succumbing to intramural recriminations that became the political equivalent of a civil war in the leper colony. “When Democrats organize a firing squad, they form a circle,” ...
Washington — When dealing with a political figure who faces allegations of sexual assault, financial misdeeds and obstruction of justice, it is difficult to sort out the greatest damage to our public life. But a strong case can be made that it is the assault on truth. This was again on ...
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is being lauded as the serious candidate in the race. Her motto, “I have a plan for that,” is accepted as proof that she is thoughtful and conscientious. That’s too generous. One should expect a grown-up to evaluate costs and benefits, to understand tradeoffs, and ...
In 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mississippi’s senior U.S. Senator James O. Eastland spoke at a pro-segregation rally. Robert Caro, in his book “Master of the Senate,” describes Eastland’s racist rant to the crowd: “In every stage of ...
Washington — That the Democrats’ two evenings of dueling oratory snippets this week are called “debates” validates Finley Peter Dunne’s prediction that “when we Americans are through with the English language, it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.” Already a ...
Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden is taking heat and light for his recent switcheroo on abortion rights. But Biden is hardly alone in his inconsistency on this volatile issue. Some of us remember how now-president Donald Trump made a famous abortion switcheroo too. Biden’s big ...
Washington — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report that is the closest thing we have to the quantification of despair. Between 1999 and 2017, suicide rates in America rose to their highest level since World War II. The increase can be found among women ...
Washington — The most important variable in the current Persian Gulf confrontation is time. The Trump administration wants to play a long game, to draw the sanctions tourniquet ever tighter. Iran needs to play a short game, to escape the American chokehold before it becomes fatal. This inner ...
Surfing conservative websites, it didn’t take long to find this nugget of backward thinking, courtesy of American Thinker: “The sexual revolution that was kick-started by the advent of birth control in the early 1960s has done irreparable damage to Western civilization.” If you had any ...
“You Americans do not rear children, you incite them; you give them food and shelter and applause.” — Randall Jarrell, “Pictures from an Institution” Washington — Oberlin College has an admirable liberal past and a contemptible progressive present that will devalue its degrees far ...
Washington — President Trump has a credibility problem at a time when his confrontation with Iran is moving toward a dangerous test. “There is no capital in the bank” in terms of trust with major European and Asian allies, said one former senior defense official. “We’ve managed to ...
Cúcuta, Colombia — The walkers come in a steady flow, individually and in small groups, through most of the day. The serpentine mountain road they take often has little room at the sides, leaving refugees in the path of traffic. The 350-mile journey to Bogota is part forced march and part ...
When politicians talk in private, they regularly use a cruel shorthand. For example, a candidate who is uninformed, unreflective and uncurious is often branded a “lightweight,” as in, “He is so lightweight he could tap-dance on a souffle.” Conversely, a “heavyweight” would be a ...
Washington — As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of “unprovoked attacks” near the Strait of Hormuz, video screens behind him showed thick black smoke billowing from the two tankers that were struck Thursday. It was the dramatic imagery that sometimes precedes armed ...
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who, like nearly everyone, is running for president, presides over the largest and most media-centric city in America. His national name recognition is respectable, but his support is undetectable. Literally. He’s at 0%, lagging behind such Democratic titans as ...
Why all the talk? Why all the debate? Why all the angst? The case is clear. He deserves to be impeached. So don’t wait any longer. Rev up the engines. Start the hearings. Impeach him — now! No, I’m not talking about President Donald Trump (not yet!). I’m talking about Attorney General ...
Washington — “It is a great advantage to a president,” said the 30th of them, “and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.” Or, Calvin Coolidge would say today, a great woman. While today’s incumbent advertises himself as an “extremely ...
Washington — One measure of the seriousness of a Democratic candidate for president is his or her understanding of the importance of religion in our common life. I am not talking here of the perfunctory bow toward personal, sectarian belief, which is neither qualifying nor disqualifying in a ...
Washington — When the president of the United States sides with a murderous dictator over our own CIA, you would think it would be big news. When that dictator is a communist who has threatened the United States with missile attacks, you would think leaders of the Republican Party might be at ...