A few boring statistics to start, but first: As almost everyone knows the United States is somewhere around full employment, maybe beyond that (full employment doesn’t necessarily mean everyone who wants a job has one because people may be in transition from one to another or some other reason not to be working). Anyway, here’s…

Is doing the right thing the right thing to do if it accomplishes the wrong result? Should Congress impeach Donald Trump if doing so guarantees his election to another four years as President? If Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses, should he not be impeached? Richard Nixon left a smoking gun. Bill Clinton committed indiscretions…

Back in the 18th Century Grigory Potemkin, a minister and lover of Russian Empress Catherine the Great, constructed phony villages populated by phony peasants to impress foreign ambassadors with how Crimea had prospered under Russian rule. As the entourage passed, the villages were disassembled and moved downstream to be viewed by the ambassadors as they passed…

Not long after Richard Nixon became President in 1969, his Attorney General, the dour, pipe-smoking John Mitchell, scolded the media for what he apparently thought was an over-reaction to the incendiary rhetoric of the new administration. Mitchell, in words more ironic than he or anyone else could appreciate at the time, advised the critics to…

When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the founders—seeking the broadest consensus possible among the Jewish community—adopted a system of proportional representation, a system that guaranteed that an Orthodox Jewish political party or parties would have representation in the Israeli Knesset or legislature. It was meant as a temporary measure until Israel had…

I apologize to anyone who cares that I haven’t written anything for a couple of weeks. Part of the problem is the enormity of the crisis at hand and the difficulty in breaking it down into bite-size pieces. Consider: On the one hand, our chief administrator is a pathological liar who is brilliant at demagoguery…

Joe Biden spoke at the Munich Security conference last month and assured the audience,–mainly Europeans, I think–not to worry: America will be back. The question is, though, will our allies in Europe and Asia be there waiting for us? Twice now in the past 20 years, America has shown its willingness to go it alone…

Back in the ‘70s, when Richard Nixon was in the throes of the Watergate scandal, the U.S. economy was overheating because of the Vietnam War, among other causes. Nixon had attempted during his first term to deal with the problem by imposing a wage and prize freeze. After several months, the freeze was lifted. Distracted…

We live in interesting times. For the second time in our lives, for many of us, the president is a former television personality. Ronald Reagan was a B Hollywood actor who became the spokesman for General Electric. Reagan appeared weekly on the little screen, and while doing that he made a lot of money traveling…

These are obviously difficult and trying times for many of us, especially for those of us who believe in civility, compassion, constitutionality and competence in government. I will in the coming days and months share my thoughts, for what they’re worth, on the contemporary scene. If you’re interested, watch this space.