From the Left
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Dead Duck: Kash Patel Files a Lulu of a Lawsuit
For Americans who have watched FBI Director Kash Patel slosh beer with the U.S. Olympic hockey team, proclaim that the FBI had Charlie Kirk's murderer in custody only to have to say "Never mind," and stand glassy-eyed at press conferences looking somewhere between an unhappy participant in a police line-up and an anesthetized deer in ...Read more
Shooter's Real Problem Was Mental, Not Political
"Shots Fired at Correspondents' Dinner" dominated TV headlines following the gun attack at the Washington Hilton. Correction: Shots were not fired at the dinner but in the corridor outside. That's where security had pinned the accused gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, on his stomach and handcuffed.
Some journalists like to overdramatize everything, ...Read more
ACLU Joins Coalition Calling For FIFA To Uphold Human Rights Ahead of 2026 World Cup
From Los Angeles to New Jersey, many of the United States' host cities for the 2026 World Cup are home to large immigrant communities. Though this year's slogan is "Football Unites the World," these communities now live in daily fear of racial profiling, inhumane detention, separation from loved ones and summary deportation because of ...Read more
Another Radically Underqualified Trump Appointee is About to Bite the Dust
You can be Secretary of Defense (War) and cause the mightiest military in the world to be brought to its knees, and still keep your job in the Trump regime.
You can be in charge of public health and cause measles to reemerge as a major hazard to Americans, and still keep your job.
You can be illegally enriching yourself and your family as ...Read more
Is the SPLC Indictment About Fraud or Something More Sinister?
When it comes to the U.S. Justice Department’s stunning announcement of criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, as an old saying goes, where you stand depends on where you sit.
If you sit with the broad section of Americans who revere the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement ...Read more
Lashing Out
These are troubling times for President Donald Trump. His poll numbers are in the toilet. The country doesn't trust him with the economy and doesn't support him on what was his favorite issue, immigration. The war he started is not going well and is not popular. He needs to "win" it and make it be over and the Iranians are not cooperating. ...Read more
The Perniciousness of Centrism
The Left is extreme, the Right is extreme. In the middle lies truth and reason.
None of this is true -- but it is taken for granted, even by many of those on the Left and the Right. The Left is right about some things, as is the Right, and centrists are frequently, perhaps usually, proven wrong. But moderates control news and entertainment ...Read more
AI Can Write Stories, but It Can't Tell Yours
Somebody told me that journalism is dead. It is true that the industry has been struggling since the dawn of the internet and artificial intelligence seems to be poised to finish it off, but it's not dead. Perhaps this is our opportunity to see it meaningfully evolve.
Thanks to the internet, we have taught an entire population to read for ...Read more
Vote for the Buttery Past
I was lucky enough to be born at the intersection of three great pancake traditions. My mother made the American pancake from a box mix called Bisquick, which can also be used to make biscuits and dumplings. My mother made dumplings when she made beef stew. She did not make biscuits. She was not an airy, fluffy cook. She was a stodgy, starchy ...Read more
How Do We Transcend War?
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Let’s listen again to these viral words, as they hover over the planet . . . as they hover over, good God, the future. Finally, finally, the time has come for every last one of us to release the question these words force on us, from the privacy, from the cynicism, ...Read more
Hardball
What next? The war is not going well. Already, there are loud whispers that President Donald Trump may be forced to accept a deal that is not much better than the one former President Barack Obama made with Iran, which Trump tore up in his first term, leading to the nuclear development that underlies the current crisis. Trump can call it ...Read more
Dinner Is Served: Will Trump Be Pressed?
The White House Correspondents' Dinner Saturday is the hottest ticket in town, but a tempest is brewing among journalists on Donald J. Trump's presence at the posh gathering.
This is a moment in the tales of our embattled city. It will be Trump's first time at the dinner, a chance for the Fourth Estate to speak truth to his power.
Two ...Read more
The Fall of Trumpty-Dumpty's Great Wall
Even in this ugly era of political divisiveness under "King Donald," some things remain bigger than partisan politics.
Travel deep into Southwest Texas to the Mexican border and you'll witness two powerful forces of political harmony in Big Bend National Park. First is the true majesty of nature -- 1,200 square miles of high desert beauty, ...Read more
Willfully Blind: American Universities Continue to Squirm Under Stefanik's Anti-Semitism Spotlight
Congressional hearings aren't known for generating Must-See TV, so the rare exceptions tend to be notable. Attorney Joseph Welch's takedown of the demagogic Senator from Wisconsin during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings -- "At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?" -- became iconic. Oliver North's attorney, Brendan Sullivan, torpedoed ...Read more
More Than a Dozen Wrongful Arrests Due to Police Reliance on Facial Recognition Technology
When police arrested Kimberlee Williams, a grandmother living in Oklahoma, because of a warrant from Maryland, she was shocked. She had never been to Maryland in her life.
Ms. Williams later learned that Maryland police had relied on an incorrect result from facial recognition technology that falsely flagged her as a suspect. She is the 14th ...Read more
The 10 most important ways to resist now (revised, updated, expanded)
In light of Trump’s increasingly cruel and bonkers behavior — toward Iran, toward the pope, his posts, his bottomless vengeance, his continuing ICE raids, his continuing use of the Justice Department to target his enemies, his shameless corruption — many of you want to know: “What can I do now?” Here are 10 recommendations, in rough ...Read more
Trump, the Pope and the Gospel of 'Pulp Fiction'
It is hardly surprising that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s explicitly Christian monthly worship services monthly in the Pentagon have raised alarm in some quarters about the separation of church and state.
But who expected to find him quoting lines of alleged scripture that were lifted from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 cult classic “...Read more
The Kindness of Strangers
I've been playing in the public arenas of politics and commentary, of columns and television and campaigns, for long enough not to pretend that it was all warm and fuzzy back then. It was mean and sometimes scary. But mostly not. Even during the "hottest" times, we mostly managed to separate the professional from the personal. We disagreed; we...Read more
Politics as Religion
The first quarter of this century in the United States saw the rise and triumph of "team politics," in which voters view the Democratic and Republican parties less as representatives of an ideology or set of policies than as opposing teams defined by culture, style and aesthetics. Democrats follow TikTok or Threads, shop at Trader Joe's, drive...Read more
As Gas Prices Keep Rising, My Electric Car Keeps Saving Me Money
Gasoline prices have surged to their highest levels since the COVID-19 pandemic and it has me feeling pretty good about my electric vehicle purchase. I know that utility prices are also on the rise, but being able to plug my car in at home instead of paying horrid prices at the pump has still saved our family money. Charging an EV at home costs ...Read more




















































