When, at Mamie Till’s insistence, the coffin was opened, she saw her son’s right eyeball sitting on his cheek, dangling by the optic nerve. Let that single grisly detail stand in for all the rest. Let it speak to the savagery two white men unleashed upon the body of a 14-year-old black ...
Washington — Along the East River, which is not really a river (it is a 16-mile-long tidal estuary), perhaps 20,000 people actually chose to spend a gorgeous autumn afternoon last Saturday listening to socialist Bernie Sanders, who is not really a socialist — he just wants to confiscate ...
Yerevan, Armenia — With so much bad news in the world these days, it was invigorating to spend last weekend here celebrating some courageous human-rights activists who reminded me of what’s best in the human spirit. The event was this year’s awards ceremony of the Aurora Prize for ...
Washington — The impeachment of President Trump has reached an early point of absurdity. Just about everyone in Washington believes that a quid pro quo — in which Trump used American clout to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden — ...
One of my earliest lessons as a columnist came after I wrote about a tip jar that wasn’t. In 2004, I was standing in a coat-check line in Cleveland after a big event for a charitable group, watching one of the middle-aged women who had served our meals as she now stood behind the counter ...
If you want to run for office, political consultants will hammer away at one point: Tell stories. People respond to stories. We’ve been a storytelling species since our fur-clad ancestors gathered around campfires. Don’t cite statistics. No one can remember statistics. Make it human. Make ...
“If you’re white, you’re all right. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re black, get back.” — African-American folk saying I was about to give a speech — I can’t remember when or even where — when this teacher brought a student up, hoping I could help her. The ...
Washington — “I am a classically trained engineer,” says Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, “and I firmly believe in regression to the mean.” Applying a concept from statistics to the randomness of today’s politics is problematic. In any case, Hurd, 42, is not waiting for the ...
Washington — Americans are starting to see the full, global implications of having a president who is ignorant of history, driven by impulse, immune to advice and dead to the romance of American ideals. The betrayal of the Kurds has damaged President Donald Trump so badly — including ...
Twenty years ago, former U.S. Transportation Secretary, President of the Red Cross and future North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole was a decidedly long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination — an honor her husband, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole had won four years ...
Beirut — The aftershocks of President Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds in Syria are rumbling through the region, and a string of Lebanese officials told me last week that they fear they’re the next to be discarded by America. Lebanese politicians and security officials, in a series of ...
The beam from his flashlight reflects off the glass, so we can’t see what he saw. But in a sense, we don’t need to see what Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean saw to know what he saw, peering through that window. He saw something fearsome, a threat to life and limb. All this in the ...
Washington — Presidential aspirant Beto O’Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O’Rourke’s suggestion, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax the ...
Washington — At a gathering last Saturday night of military and intelligence veterans, one topic shrouded the room: President Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria who had fought and died to help America destroy the Islamic State. “It’s a dagger to the heart to walk ...
Washington — Beto O’Rourke, innovative for interpreting a failed Senate campaign as a steppingstone to the presidency, is now famous for (1) his use of profanity on the campaign trail, (2) his pledge that “hell, yes” he wants to confiscate AR-15s and (3) his proposal to tax religious ...
Washington — Last week’s news that President Trump is considering abandoning the Open Skies Treaty probably brought a yawn from most observers. Arms-control agreements like this seem to many people like yesterday’s problem. But ignoring arms control is a dangerous mistake, especially ...
Donald Trump is testing whether he can claim immunity from the rule of law. That’s the plain meaning of the announcement that his administration will not cooperate in any way with the House impeachment inquiry. The letter released by White House counsel Pat Cipollone brands the impeachment ...
I was maybe 10 years old when this happened. Mom is driving, I’m in the back seat. It’s night. She’s trying to cross Vermont, a busy L.A. thoroughfare, from a side street. Southbound traffic is jammed, but a guy in a truck makes a hole and waves us through. We’ve almost cleared the ...
Washington — Donald Trump, an ongoing eruption of self-refuting statements (“I’m a very stable genius” with “a very good brain”), is adding self-impeachment to his repertoire. Spiraling downward in a tightening gyre, his increasingly unhinged public performances (Google the one with ...
“Civilization is hideously fragile. ... There’s not much between us and the horrors underneath. Just about a coat of varnish.” — C.P. Snow Washington — The most serious, practical, pressing problem with politics as tribal conflict is the inability to draw moral lines against ...