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…

A couple of months ago I suggested that given the destructive, chaotic behavior of the soon to be departed Chief Executive it was hard to know what else we should worry about his doing. Since the election his desperation has grown along with the outrageousness of his actions. We’ve all remarked on his being aided…

As most of you know, after 33 years of incisive political analysis every Friday night on the PBS NewsHour, Mark Shields has decided to leave his seat opposite David Brooks. For us devoted fans, it is a bittersweet moment. Many of us made a point of not missing those Friday nights, and if we couldn’t…

On September 22, the United States recorded its 200,000th death from Covid19. Since then, the death rate has accelerated so that in eight short weeks another 50,000 men, women and some children have died. At this rate–and we have no reason to assume that it will decelerate–by Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, we will have…