Joe Biden’s Wilted Rose Garden Strategy
By most all accounts, Joe Biden is cruising. Ostensibly the Democratic favorite, he has led—usually by large numbers—in almost every poll since he entered the 2020 race in April. He has seemed to...
View ArticleNo, the Buttigiegs Are Not Straight
The seriousness of Pete Buttigieg’s pursuit of the Democratic nomination for president is, in no uncertain terms, a stunning reflection of progress. It is remarkable that a gay man—one who lived...
View ArticleThe West’s Complicity in Sudan’s Massacres
Omar al-Bashir had just fallen as president of Sudan when I visited Sarah Abdelgalil at her home in England this April. Abdelgalil is a spokeswomen for the Sudanese Professionals Association, the...
View ArticleWho Is Actually Running the U.S. Military’s Iran Efforts?
The United States appears to be fast entering a war footing with Iran—blaming the country for an attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week, accusing it of testing the limits of their now-dead...
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I’ve Climbed Everest 21 Times. It’s Not the Mountain It Used to Be.
I didn’t want to be a climber. My dream since I was young was to become a doctor. But I had to make a choice between my dream and my family. I chose my family.I was born in Thame, Nepal, around 1960....
View ArticleEx-President Trump on Trial
It’s March 2021, two months since President Kamala Harris was sworn in as the forty-sixth president of the United States. The Senate has just confirmed her nominee for attorney general in a mostly...
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How Graffiti Became Gentrified
Graffiti artists learn early not to get too attached. Ephemera is as central to their medium as spray paint. Some works last months, others don’t make it through the night. Even the most famous pieces...
View ArticleTrump’s Kick-Off Rally Showcases What the President Does Best
Donald Trump has re-launched a presidential campaign that never really ever landed. (Remember, the president filed to run for re-election the same day he was inaugurated.) Speaking for 80 minutes at an...
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Hulu’s Das Boot Gets Lost at Sea
The submarine pen in La Rochelle was built in in 1941. Like the ones at St. Nazaire and Lorient, its colossal berths, titanic dimensions and worn concrete today give the structure the appearance of a...
View ArticleAn Administration Run by Temp Workers
It’s been six months since the Department of Defense had a permanent leader. After Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned in protest in December, President Donald Trump named Patrick Shanahan, the...
View ArticleThe Depressing Reality Behind Hong Kong’s Protests
The images from Hong Kong over the past two weeks were stunning. On Sunday, June 15, one million Hong Kong residents flooded the downtown streets, demanding that city authorities scrap a bill which...
View ArticleWe Gotta Pay More Attention to This Boring Guy
It’s almost hard to believe now, but a year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency seemed to make news every day. Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head at the time, was trying to dismantle myriad Obama-era...
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The Sameness of Cass Sunstein
Say you want to write a book. Assume that you’ve written books before. Before beginning, you face a choice: Either you can research new material for the book, or you can write about similar topics and...
View ArticleAmerica, We Need to Talk
Speaking to a room full of obscenely wealthy people on Tuesday, Joe Biden took a break from asking for money to praise a segregationist—in the name of civility, of course. Echoing one of his already...
View ArticleThe Green New Deal: A Capitalist Plot (Part 1)
Those of us who grew up in the 1950s retain an enduring image of President Dwight D. Eisenhower as an avuncular old fellow who accomplished little in his two terms, spending most of his time on the...
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Give War a Chance
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to address America’s opioid epidemic has one unusual component, something that sets her dramatically apart from nearly everyone else running for the 2020 Democratic...
View ArticleJoe Biden’s Racial Dog Whistle
On the eve of Juneteenth, Joe Biden made the perplexing decision to praise two long-dead segregationist senators for their civility. “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” he told a room of donors...
View ArticleNeil Gorsuch Scorns the “Offended” Atheists
A broad majority of the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that an enormous Christian cross standing on public land, and funded by public money, does not violate the Constitution’s separation of church...
View ArticleThe Clinton Administration Did Not Fix the Balkans
Kosovo reached peak euphoria last week when Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright descended on the capital Prishtina. The ceremony marked the anniversary of the 1999 NATO bombing that ended Serbia’s...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: Viktor Orbán
During a busy May that saw his “infrastructure week” flop and his bellicose posturing toward Iran temporarily thwarted, President Donald Trump found time to roll out the red carpet for Viktor Orbán,...
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