A platform for sense and decency … and smackdowns of reactionaries

Jack Goldsmith applies for a job by waffling on prosecuting Trump: An exchange

I recently struggled to understand this Jack Goldsmith piece about prosecuting Trump for January 6. The piece is exasperating in its fatuous logic and weak-kneed “analysis”. I asked a former law partner — a former prosecutor and experienced litigator — to check my math. My view Goldsmith sets the scene by referring to “the Biden […]

And the rest of the world watches: Part 2

Why do the countries with the means to compel a change in Israel’s course — a course Western leaders routinely describe as counter-productive to peace and even contrary to Israel’s long-term interest — limit their role to hand-wringing? Is their helplessness feigned or real? There are four elements that maintain the status quo, variously playing […]

The self-styled “civilized” world continues to watch, bemused: Part 1

If the demographic curve’s against you, resort to more direct means of righting the imbalance. Always ready to off Arabs, Netanyahu decided, to the cheers of his countrymen, that it was time for another round, this time through an assault on the refugee camp in Jenin (northern Israel), a squalid place since 1953. But for […]

Stefanik and Greene: Queens of fiction, not legislators

Two Republican stalwarts have introduced House resolutions to expunge the Trump impeachments. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s version deals with December 2019 (Impeachment 1), Elise Stefanik’s with January 2021 (Impeachment 2). Although mere expressions of sentiment, not legislation, in our hyper-ventilating age obsessed with feelings and much as non-Republican critics mock them as yet more exercises in […]

Trump didn’t “mishandle;” he stole.

Hyperventilation over Trump’s indictment gives us the latest example of how media pervert language. Almost universally, headlines refer to his being charged with “mishandling classified documents”. This mischaracterizes what he’s done, and it’s not clear why media — versus Trump voters and his acolytes in Congress — want to sugar-coat the offense. “Mishandle” means, Oops; […]

MTG: Even a pox on humanity can offer benefits.

Hard to imagine that someone who contributes less than zero to humanity has done something useful. But Marjorie Taylor Greene — enamored of the public attention that finally has come her way after nearly 50 years’  obscure existence in central Georgia — has done it. She has proposed to divorce red states from blue states. […]

For decency’s sake, Tony, give it a rest.

Israel once again does what Israel has been doing for decades: inflict on Palestinians—in countless ways petty and bloody—the narrative of hopelessness. This time yet another offing of youngsters (duly and laughably described by a captive press as “militants”) for throwing stones. Israelis do this just to stoke the Arabs, who inevitably react, which, just […]

Even civic decay is Hillary’s fault?

Yet another both-sides-do-it claim: “MAGA faithful have taken election denial to the extreme, but both parties have nurtured the problem for decades.” Seriously? Democrats’ assertion — backed by facts in the Mueller Report — that Russia interfered in the 2016 to help Trump is characterized, bizarrely, as the equivalent of some 70 post-2020 lawsuits challenging […]

Trump: 7 Crimes and 73 Years

People who loathe Trump ask: Why hasn’t DOJ indicted Trump yet. Isn’t there a mountain of evidence proving guilt? The absence of an indictment is seen as Garlandian cowardice, typical liberal squishiness and the misplaced impulse not to offend Republicans. (Newsflash to Garland critics: He probably knows that you can’t offend something that, by definition, […]

Reactionaries are phonies who endanger civilized society.

“The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization” is the title of the article. Above it is the stock, golden-afternoon-glow photo of the Roman Forum blaring at the reader that ancient (and not a little blood-soaked) Rome is the reference point for “civilization”. Cliché, certainly, but intriguing to anyone interested in the fate of a society teetering on […]

Cannon fires another judicial salute in gratitude to Trump.

To recap: On August 8, 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant and lawfully removed from Trump’s possession stuff that doesn’t belong to him. He ran to Judge Cannon, an appointee of his, and got her to appoint a Special Master to scour that stuff for things that the FBI shouldn’t see/have or should return […]

Unrecognizable Russia

(By MH, guest contributor) We Russophiles, we lucky few who have experienced Russia in depth, over the years, repeatedly, without the language as a barrier, know how wonderful it can be, with, on a personal level, unequalled hospitality, and with, on a cultural level, unrivalled refinement and professionalism.  I dare say for us, but certainly […]

Judges, too, have career aspirations.

DOJ has rightly appealed Trumper Judge Cannon’s incoherent Order in favor of Trump in his manufactured dispute over government-owned [sic] documents the FBI retrieved from his home. In normal (read, non-Trump-related) circumstances, the qualification of Cannon as a “Trumper” judge would be inappropriate and (probably) unjust. But her decision, including its hints of the resentment […]