Columnist.
Often, when people set out to show how quickly a place can decline, they point to Detroit. Once an extremely prosperous city, thanks to industry cutting out for greener pastures and white people cutting out to save their lives, the place began to resemble downtown Beirut.
When it comes to selecting Supreme Court justices, Donald Trump was correct in stating that next to going to war, it is probably the most important decision that a president will be called upon to make.
At one time, not that long ago actually, diversity meant variety. What's more, it usually referred to opposing points of view, not to pigmentation. In recent years, that has all changed.
Outside of baseball, I have absolutely no interest in watching spectator sports. That doesn't mean I don't have opinions about them. As you may have noticed, I have opinions about everything.
When President Trump told his thousands of fans at the Fargo, North Dakota, rally, "The Democrats want to take away your Second Amendment, erase your borders, throw open the jailhouse doors and destroy your freedoms," he sounded, if not like a raving lunatic, at least like someone who is engaging in super-charged hyperbole, tinged with a touch of paranoia. That is until you stop and think about it and realize that in fact he was understating the reality.
There's nothing like having lunch with a guy who is 103 years old to put you in a philosophical frame of mind.
Rumor has it that hand in hand with age comes wisdom. But as Ira Gershwin once put it, it ain't necessarily so.
I often hear from people wondering how I am able to stand living in California. Lately, that question is accompanied by a second, asking how I feel about cutting California into three parts.
Considering the flood of bile that has been directed at President Trump by the media and the lack of support he has received from major Republican figures in Congress, his track record over the last 17 months has been nearly as miraculous as his victory over Hillary Clinton.
To say that an actor spoke his mind at an awards ceremony is not to be confused with a compliment. Speaking one's mind is only a good thing if one's mind is in good working order. Clearly, standing up before an audience of one's mindless peers at the Tony's Award Show and receiving a standing ovation for saying "F—k Trump!" on live TV is an act of intellectual desperation.
Rudy Giuliani got into hot water for merely stating that whereas he admires most women, he draws the line at Stormy Daniels, a slut whose entire life has been devoted to performing sex acts for the camera.
I don't claim to be an economist. But having seen and heard from far too many of them ever since Trump rattled their cage by announcing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, I really don't think I'd care to be one.
Most politicians, even those with whom we might agree when it comes to the major issues, are so personally vile that when they appear in public, they should have to ring a little bell to alert decent people to their presence the way that lepers were forced to do during the Dark Ages.
All I ever really wanted to do was be a writer. I might have settled for being a Major League Baseball player or being a professional pianist, but I wasn't very good at baseball and I couldn't play the piano.
The opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem was a moving event for many Christians and Jews, and not just in the sense that it had been moved from Tel Aviv. It was the fulfillment of empty promises made by other presidents by the one president who seems to take seriously the notion that a man's word is his bond.
Although I had always been interested in politics (I won a $5 bet with one of my uncles when I was 12 and was convinced that in 1952 the GOP presidential candidate would be Dwight Eisenhower, not Robert Taft), it wasn't until I was well into my teens that I read Eric Hoffer's seminal The True Believer and learned great truths that I have never forgotten.
When it comes to the investigation of collusion between Trump and the Russians, there are more ironies than you can shake a stick at.
This is a year of anniversaries, among them the 70th anniversary of Israel's birth and the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's death. It also happens to be the 50th anniversary of my father's death. As such, it seems an appropriate time to share a piece I wrote at the time.
As atrocious as the public school system — which should more appropriately be called the federal indoctrination system — happens to be, you would think that many more conservative parents would take advantage of such options as private and religious schools. Unfortunately, some of them can be quite expensive, though still a puny expense when weighed against the eventual cost of college.
After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt declared Dec. 7, 1941, to be "a day of infamy." On Sept. 11, 2001, when a gang of Islamic terrorists crashed four airliners into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 3,000 Americans, the nation mourned yet another sneak attack.
