From the Left
/Politics
At The Ramparts: Under Siege from Autocrats and Crooks, Fighters for Democracy Hang Tough
The fight to preserve democracy around the world has come to resemble Whac-A-Mole, with autocrats wielding power or chasing it emerging on the global scene only to be faced down, then to emerge again. The biggest battle of them all is playing out in Ukraine, where a conscience-less war criminal unrepentant about committing mass murder has sought...Read more
Arresting Developments: Donald Trump Prepares to Face the Music
Sir Walter Scott's famous line about what a tangled web it is that we weave when first we practice to deceive was written in 1808, but the poet might as well have prophesied former President Donald Trump's ill-fated one-night stand with Stormy Daniels when he wrote it.
The "affair," let's call it, was suffused with dishonesty at every stage, ...Read more
Indecent Exposure: The Rot That Is the Republican Party Reclaims Center Stage
Former Vice President Mike Pence made news last Saturday by saying something that shouldn't have been news at all, but rather self-evident pablum right out of the mouth of Captain Obvious. Twenty-six months after an insurrectionist mob attempting a putsch stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beating the daylights out of police and seeking to ...Read more
Lucky Hank, Lucky Us: An American Hero Leaves Behind a Gift
In October 1942, 20-year-old Jacob Henry (Hank) Goldman, the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, walked into a Navy recruiting center in Philadelphia, hoping to enlist. It was 10 months since the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
Goldman was attending the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School at the time, studying to become an ...Read more
Hacks and Heroes: The Fight Against Putin Highlights The Good, The Great and The Ugly
President Joe Biden's dramatic train trip through a war zone to stand with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kiev inspired most of the world, but not everyone. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin hacks, who ardently wish not to join the thousands of Russians thrown into jail for opposing the former KGB agent's corrupt autocracy, did not applaud ...Read more
Sly Fox: Libel Lawsuit Documents Network's Sad Embrace of Trash, For Cash
When Dominion Voting Systems filed its $1.6 billion (that's with a "b") lawsuit against Fox News Network two years ago, it alleged that Fox had intentionally and recklessly defamed it by publishing and republishing false claims that Dominion had rigged the 2020 presidential election, manipulated vote counts and paid kickbacks to government ...Read more
Bulwark: University of Haifa Helps Israel Hold the Line
Winston Churchill's proposition that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others that have been tried" has picked up support in recent years, courtesy of two of the world's foremost democracies. The United States and Israel, which have much in common generally, have each given democracy skeptics plenty of cause for ...Read more
Grace And Disgrace: Black America Suffers Another Outrage
During his last interview before his death three years ago, U.S. congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis was asked whether he ever grew so discouraged by the persistent enormity of racial injustice in America that he felt his efforts "weren't working." Lewis, who as a civil rights activist had been falsely imprisoned and savagely beaten, ...Read more
Demagogues' Devil: Targeted by MAGA World, Adam Schiff Resumes Punching
It was nearly 50 years ago that Edward Markey, then the lowliest of Massachusetts state legislators, challenged the legislative old guard by pushing through judicial reform measures that ended a gravy train for ethically suspect politicos and their allies. Displeased at Markey in the extreme, the legislative leadership retaliated against him ...Read more
White Wash: Ron DeSantis Will Decide What Your Children Learn About Black History
Facing History and Ourselves has a mission statement that seems not just sensible but indisputable. "To build a more just and equitable future," it posits, "we must face our history in all its complexity."
President Gerald Ford first recognized February as Black History Month, urging Americans to "honor the too-often-neglected accomplishments ...Read more
Send in the Clowns: Biden's Mistakes Invite the GOP Circus
With all the outstanding questions about who packed up then-Vice President Joe Biden's files in the Obama administration's final days, who unpacked them and why documents with classified markings were unlawfully removed in the process, one fact is pretty well-established. Biden's testy response to a reporter's question about how such documents...Read more
Hunger Pain: Jim McGovern Prods America to Get Food on Everyone's Table
The slow-motion train wreck that was last week's selection of a Republican speaker of the House almost certainly drove America's regard for Congress to new lows, assuming that's possible. Televised internecine warfare within the GOP featured battling among the crazies, the phonies and the insurrectionists, once again recalling Henry Kissinger'...Read more
Art of the Con: On Trumpism's Wings, Mr. Santos Goes to Washington
By the time former President Donald Trump scooted out of Washington on Jan. 20, 2021, The Washington Post had counted a mere 30,573 false or misleading claims by The Great Swamp Drainer during his time in office. Even that was an undercount, because the Post decided early on that it would only count one falsehood per topic for each speech, ...Read more