Sunday, December 15, 2019 Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia Dearest Ambassador Haley, I am writing from the distant past to offer some modest thoughts about your exciting future. I understand congratulations are in order as you embark on the journey to seek the presidential nomination of the party of states' rights, nullification, and secession. (One hundred […]

Mitt Romney has never missed an opportunity to be an opportunist. Romney the leveraged buyout pioneer took advantage of the U.S. tax code to pocket tens of millions of dollars from investments in companies that failed. Mitt the mythical Massachusetts moderate transformed himself into the "severely conservative" 2012 presidential nominee by turning his back on […]

What happens when clinics providing healthcare services to women close? Among other things, American women will needlessly die. That's the horrifying conclusion from a recent study published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology. Designed to gauge the impact of the closures of 100 women's health clinics nationwide between 2010 and 2013, Dr. Amar Srivastava […]

Writers, bloggers, commenters, and pundits nearly exhausted the dictionary in the runup to the president's July 4th Trumpapalooza™. With his tanks, parades, flyovers, and personal address, Donald Trump's appropriation of America's Independence Day rightly earned descriptions ranging from inappropriate, disgusting, and self-serving to grotesque, Orwellian, and masturbatory. But word that the Republican National Committee was […]

Imagine you're in a coffee shop when a man you don't know sits down uninvited next to you. Scribbling on a napkin and spouting something about "tax cuts pay for themselves," the man then confidently proclaims: "You really can't collect much money from upper-income people. They know how to get around taxes." You'd probably roll […]

In the great and proud history of the United States, no failing, no appalling ideology, no perverse institution--no national tragedy--compares to the American sin of chattel slavery. Codified in the nation's founding documents in a grotesque mockery of the Declaration's self-evident truth that "all men are created equal," the 250-year bondage of black Americans was […]

So another tax season has come and gone. In this case, that means Americans can render their verdict on the first year of the signature legislative achievement of Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Thus far, the reviews are not kind. Despite an analysis by […]

Zombies have gripped American popular culture for years. In books, television shows, and films, the undead are regularly resurrected for your entertainment. (Even Jane Austen fans were treated to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy butchering those from beyond the grave in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.) But whatever their reanimation story, the zombie's Achilles' heel […]

Historical events occur twice, Karl Marx famously said, first as tragedy and then as farce. But when it comes to the rampant lawlessness of Republican presidential administrations, the record is a succession of national tragedies for the United States. And the damage to America's democratic institutions is no laughing matter. As President Trump, his attorney […]

For Republicans, the gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has become an annual ritual in their hyperbolic effort to peel away Jewish Americans who overwhelmingly give their votes to Democrats. But the GOP brought an extra sense of urgency to last week's 2019 AIPAC Policy Conference. Less than six months after Democrats […]