Lawrence Meyer

I want to say a word or two about Barry Sussman who died June 1 at 87. Barry was my first editor at The Washington Post, and he was the best editor I ever had. He was also a friend for more than 50 years. Besides that he was the brains and driving force behind…

A few months ago I was lucky enough to find an old copy  of essays by E.B. White. The book had been discarded—put on a bookshelf where residents of my building (“our fancy building” Judy Woodruff, one of the residents, calls it) can put books they no longer want. Anyone can take a book off…

The Supreme Court’s draft opinion proposing to overturn Roe v. Wade brings to mind the Jewish telegram: “Start worrying. Letter follows.” The draft opinion, revoking a constitutional right that has existed for almost half a century, is bad enough. What the decision may portend, though, is even worse. So many dire possibilities are suggested in…

When I was a youth back in the 1950s, most of the movies on daytime television were old westerns. I personally was enamored with Hopalong Cassidy and a proud member of the Bar 20 Club. One of the popular clichés, when a character was considered to be a little off, was to say that he…

(CNN)A bill backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that would prohibit Florida’s public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” or “guilt” based on their race, sex or national origin received first approval [January 18] by the state’s Senate Education Committee. The Republican-controlled committee approved the bill with six Republican senators in favor…

For decades—at least half a century—we have been hearing about “activist (meaning liberal) judges” making judge-made law.  The mantra of the conservatives who protested this supposed phenomenon wanted legislatures to legislate and judges to judge. Indeed when Samuel Alito and John Roberts were appointed to the Supreme Court more than 15 years ago, Roberts proclaimed…

Are we in the Weimar period of our American democracy? By that I mean are we enjoying a spring of liberal and progressive values and legislation before a dark night of autocracy, chaos and repression descends on us? It ought to be clear by now that the threat to our democracy didn’t end with the…

Twelve years ago I wrote a piece for the Nieman Watchdog chastising my former news colleagues for laziness in writing that it took 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. My point was that by writing that, rather than saying it took 51 votes to pass a bill, they were misleading readers. Then,…

Our text for today is taken from “Six Crises,” an early memoir written in 1962 by a former vice president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. In the book, Nixon discusses six events involving him that he chose to characterize in a melodramatic way as “crises”. The wisdom he imparts from these experiences is…

  It’s  been a long four years since this time in January 2017 when Barack Obama was succeeded by the 45th President. In the past four years we have become aware, if we didn’t already know it, that our country is seriously–may even dangerously–divided. If we didn’t know it before, we certainly did after January…