Columnist.
What's the worst part about horrific, murderous violence in America? Well, except for the death, the ruined lives, the pain and the fear and the rush to pass laws that wouldn't have prevented it, I think it has to be the media criticism.
For those who hoped that former FBI Director James Comey was going to provide some bombshell evidence — or any evidence at all — that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, Thursday's Senate testimony had to be a major letdown.
The saddest part about the recent terrorist attacks in the UK — aside from the actual horror for the victims and their families, of course — was that there was so little new to say about it.
In one of the great scenes in American cinema, Jake Blues (John Belushi) of the Blues Brothers, explains — at gunpoint — to his ex-fiancee (Carrie Fischer) why he left her at the altar.
While Washington freaked out over the Congressional Budget Office's verdict on the American Health Care Act (aka "Trumpcare") and how cutting back health insurance would cost countless lives, the more interesting accounting came out of California.
"Loser" is strange word. Literally and most plainly, it is simply someone who doesn't win some specific contest or challenge: the loser of a race, boxing match, business deal, etc. Economists routinely talk about how this or that policy — on trade, taxes, whatever — creates "winners and losers."
We have seen the president struggle with the "swamp" in Washington. Well, if Washington is a swamp, then the Middle East is the Everglades, and the alligators rolled out the red carpet.
On my first visit to Roger Ailes' office, I half expected to find him petting an enormous white tiger, perhaps feeding it from a bowl of raw meat.
Dear Vice President Pence, I hope you're holding up under the strain. I hope you don't mind me writing to you like this, but as one of those conservatives who was somewhat reassured by Donald Trump's decision to put you on the ticket, I feel compelled to ask: What's the endgame here?
Historians will tell you that Adolf Hitler was not plagued by leakers and anonymous sources within his government. Joseph Goebbels did not routinely race to the Frankfurter Zeitung to plant embarrassing or inconvenient information about the boss.
Just over 14 years ago, my daughter almost died minutes before entering the world. My wife had to have an emergency C-section. The whole thing was harrowing. Someday I'll tell the whole story. But because of that experience, and simply because I am a father, I could empathize with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's story about his son's birth.
The last weekend of April delivered one of the more enjoyable spectacles of 2017. It wasn't Donald Trump's tent-revival rally in Pennsylvania. Nor was it the cotillion of self-congratulation known as the White House Correspondents' Dinner. It wasn't even the People's Climate March, which begged for some Monty Pythonesque splinter factions — the March for People's Climate, Climate Marchers for People, whatever.
Demosthenes, the Athenian rhetorician and champion of liberty, pointed out around 355 B.C. that residents of Athens were free to praise Sparta's regime, but Spartans were banned from praising Athens.
In case you've been confused by the last few days of punditry, let me say outright that France is not America.
The debate over the death penalty can be infuriatingly dishonest.
One of the (many) things that makes the Trump presidency so hard to read is that the chapters are all out of order.
Like a passenger on a sinking ship, the president has been throwing one longstanding position after another overboard like so much dead weight. His closest advisors, biggest boosters and some members of his family are at war with one another, in a pitch battle to steer the president in their preferred direction.
As fate would have it, Hillary Clinton spoke at last month's Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security, where she emphasized the importance of peace, of women and of women in peace.
Last week on Fox News' "Special Report," syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer suggested that the message behind President Trump's military retaliation for Syria's use of chemical weapons is twofold. It's not that "there's a new sheriff in town," he explained, but that there is a sheriff at all.
In the aftermath of the Assad regime's barbaric gassing of men, women and children, President Trump declared from the Rose Garden, "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies — babies, little babies — with a chemical gas that is so lethal ... that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line."
