We are in the last days of this year, and many of us will spend at least a portion of them in the company of children we love. Never have I been more mindful of this privilege. Most of us want to believe that we will live on in the memories of the children in our lives, but I wonder how many ...

If I have this straight, House Republicans are united in the belief that public integrity is critically important for our nation. Accordingly, Joe Biden deserves to be impeached. During a meeting of the Rules Committee, Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., referencing Biden’s supposed role in pressuring ...

Last month, a reader tagged me in a post on her Facebook page to let me know that a tip jar in central Ohio was not operating as a tip jar at all. You would agree with her assessment, unless you’re a restaurant patron who loves to reward good service with tips for managers and ...

It’s easy to treat Kim Jong Un as a figure of ridicule. I’ve done it myself. His foreign ministry issues statements like this: “If any language and expressions stoking the atmosphere of confrontation are used once again on purpose at a crucial moment as now, that must really be diagnosed ...

Civility gets a bad rap these days. One need look no further than our head of state for confirmation, but it could be argued that Donald Trump is no more capable of civility than he is of humility, justice, good faith, wise counsel or any other virtue we’d wish our leaders to have. The rest ...

Josef Stalin is reputed to have said: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” In the hands of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the deaths of thousands can be a partisan bludgeon. A number of scholars have pondered the recent rise in deaths of ...

Let’s get two things straight right off the bat. The first is that, in the last few years, no one has protested police wrongdoing more vociferously than African Americans. The second is that no one has had more reason. Those reasons include Darrius Stewart, Oscar Grant, Jordan Edwards, ...

In January of this year, I met Vice President Mike Pence and behaved like the woman my mother would have wanted me to be. She was a lifelong, working-class Democrat, a Christian who was pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ when it wasn’t easy to be so in the Midwest. She’s been gone 20 years, but as ...

This is an open letter to all of you privately disgusted Republicans. It’s prompted by the fact that in the last few days, two of your colleagues have come forward to share with us your angst. One was actually an ex-colleague, former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent. He told CNN that you continue to ...

Donald Trump Jr., in his better-selling book, “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us,” writes of his reactions to visiting Arlington National Cemetery and driving “past the rows of white grave markers.” He explains: “In that moment, I ... thought of all the ...

People often offer cynical interpretations of American support for Israel. It’s the malign influence of the Jewish lobby, or Israel is a colonial outpost of the American hegemon or Israel has brainwashed American policymakers. What these right-wing conspiracists, anti-Semites and committed ...

Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays. We know because Perry Como reminds us incessantly every year about this time. And because the airports become madhouses and the highways parking lots, so many of us trying to find their way back to that place where you are safe and known, ...

In listening to the Democratic presidential debates, we might conclude that “Medicare for All” is a legislative possibility. It is not, and any presidential candidate with a scintilla of self-respect must admit that fact. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that just 30% of ...

Let’s talk about what Fiona Hill said. The former White House Russia adviser testified last week in the House impeachment investigation, one of a number of nonpartisan civil servants who came forward to shed light on Donald Trump’s attempt to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr ...

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my parents gave me a Cabbage Patch doll with blonde hair and eyes that blinked. On the spot, I named her Gloria Steinem. “Think this through,” my father cautioned. My mother just smiled. By the time my daughter, Cait, could walk, Gloria ...

In her diary entry for July 15, 1944, Anne Frank wrote words that would harrow and challenge generations not yet born: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” Less than a month later, “people” would discover Anne and seven other Jews hiding in a ...

The following rewrite of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s best loved tales is presented with apologies to the author, who did nothing to deserve it: So off went the Emperor under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, ‘Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new ...

There are large historical differences between America’s two major political parties in how they choose their presidential nominees. Consider this: Since 1952, there have been 11 presidential elections where there wasn’t a Republican president running for reelection. In 10 of those 11, ...

If I were addressing a young audience today, I would face an uphill battle to explain why conservatism so inspired me during my own impressionable years. Today, what has been dubbed “Conservatism, Inc” has become so cynical, so nasty, so truth-challenged and so dumbed-down that it repels ...

A few words about walls. Unsurprisingly, the one Donald Trump is trying to build on the southern border — the one he swore Mexico would pay for — has proven, like most things he touches, an embarrassing failure. First came news early this month that smugglers have been able to cut through ...