The exit of pundit Chris Matthews from MSNBC, on March 2, was one of the zillion discordant notes drowned out in the deafening cacophony this past spring. But it's worth another look.

Matthews' abrupt over-and-out could be a model for how men might quit the he-man wolfpack that defines Trump times.

A few days before he resigned, "The Daily ...Read more

If you're weary of America's politics of grievance, fed up with its constant churning of resentment and bitterness, then the Fourth of July might be just the festive reprieve you need. Provided you don't pay too close attention to the holiday's bill of particulars.

Over the course of more than two centuries, America has buried most of the ...Read more

The Golden State Killer is the perfect example of why the death penalty is justified -- and why life in prison is preferable.

Especially in California, where a death penalty sentence is practically meaningless.

Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. -- also dubbed the Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist or Original Night Stalker, depending on the community...Read more

In recent days, with cases of the potentially deadly coronavirus spiking across much of the United States and the jobless rate still foundering above 11%, the president was obsessed with what a Washington Post front-page story described as "an urgent task for Trump and his team." That would be coming up with a new nickname for the political foe ...Read more

It seems quaint to note in the summer of 2020 that America's global war on terror will soon enter the last year of its second decade. Yet it's not something that the junior senator from Kentucky, who has long opposed it, is prone to forget -- and though Rand Paul's attempts to end it are misguided, he is not wrong about Congress's dereliction of...Read more

Everyone knew what would happen. Coronavirus cases spiked after millions of people throughout the United States flooded shops and restaurants without masks or social distancing during the first weekends of summer.

For months, the news media has touted rising death tolls, CDC warnings, and WHO alerts, but millions of Americans still regard the ...Read more

Keep your hands visible. Don't be disrespectful. Say "yes sir, no sir." No sudden movements. These are the instructions inherited by Black children for generations. The directions are given, to sons in particular, with the hope they will get home alive should they come in contact with the police.

Passed down like grandma's recipe for banana ...Read more

When President Donald Trump launched his reelection campaign, he hoped to run, in part, on a record of foreign policy success.

He told voters he was making progress toward a big trade deal with China: "The biggest deal ever," he promised.

He was holding peace talks with North Korea aimed at dismantling Kim Jong Un's nuclear arsenal and ending ...Read more

In the spring of 2019, I was walking through a Providence, R.I., airport concourse after what had been a very painful, yet rewarding day. I had just bid a final goodbye to Armand LaValle, my pal since we were seventh-graders in Florida, who had courageously battled a cancer that we both knew was going to claim him in just a few hours.

As I ...Read more

There is something especially grotesque about the timing of President Donald Trump's pledge to veto a $740 billion defense bill if military bases named for Confederate military leaders are renamed.

He made this pledge during the July 4th holiday week.

This is a moment when Americans are roiling over issues of racial intolerance that date back ...Read more

July 1 is not a date Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is likely to forget anytime soon.

Some of the most iconic and biggest spending brands in American life, including Coca-Cola, The Hershey Company and Ford Motor Company, have joined a call for the suspension of advertising on Facebook this month. From Adidas to Verizon, many of the brands you see...Read more

The Supreme Court last week needlessly poked a hole in Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state." By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled in a case from Montana that if a state provides a tax break that benefits students at a secular private school, it must include private religious schools as well. The decision is doubly ...Read more

Wear your damn masks, because my child needs to go to school this fall.

It's been approximately 3,839 days of quarantine, and I'm in a pretty good routine. I broke down and bought a proper desk; unlike the table I had been using, it doesn't have a support beam underneath that barks my shin a dozen times a day. I set an alarm every morning. I ...Read more

When New York City's COVID-19 epidemic peaked in late March and early April, the city was reporting more than 5,000 new confirmed cases a day, and more than 60% of tests for the disease were coming back positive. In Arizona, which has a similar if somewhat smaller population (7.3 million versus 8.3 million), new cases are currently averaging ...Read more

"DC should be a state. Pass it on." That's the message supporters of D.C. statehood pushed on social media late last week as the U.S. House of Representatives prepared to vote on D.C. statehood.

And on June 26, for the first time in our nation's history, the majority-Democrat U.S. House of Representatives passed along party lines (save for a ...Read more

Donald Trump is responsible for a fair amount of badness in the 3 1/2 years he's served as president of the United States: Dismantling and denigrating American institutions, encouraging white supremacy, locking up immigrant children, asking a foreign government to interfere with an American election, lying 5 million times. And those are just a ...Read more