Balaklava, Crimea

Boris Johnson Defies Vladimir Putin’s Claim to Crimea

About that clash between a British destroyer and Russian warplanes and warships in the Black Sea last week there are conflicting versions. The Kremlin version is the more dramatic. HMS Defender, says Moscow, entered the Black Sea, made port in Odessa, Ukraine, and then sailed for Batumi on the ...

Who Is Really Killing American Democracy?

By a vote of 30-1 in the House, with unanimous support in the Senate, Juneteenth, June 19, which commemorates the day in 1865 when news of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation reached Texas, has been declared a federal holiday It is to be called Juneteenth Independence Day. Prediction: ...

Senator Manchin

Joe Manchin: Racist or Profile in Courage

In 1859, Abraham Lincoln related the tale of an Eastern monarch who charged his wise men with discovering words that would everywhere and always be true. The wise men went away and returned to present the monarch with this six-word sentence: "And this, too, shall pass away." So, the question: How ...

What Is America’s Cause in the World?

"Take away this pudding; it has no theme," is a comment attributed to Winston Churchill, when a disappointing dessert was put in front of him. Writers have used Churchill's remark to describe a foreign policy that lacks coherence or centrality of purpose. For most of our lifetimes, this has not ...

Were the Wars Wise? Were They Worth It?

Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the "last full measure of devotion" to their country. Heart-rending is an apt description of those ...

Does Our Diversity Portend Disintegration?

After nine people were shot to death by a public transit worker, who then killed himself in San Jose, the latest mass murder in America, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke for many on the eve of this Memorial Day weekend. "What the hell is going on in the United States of America? What the ...

Did the GOP Just Dodge a Bullet?

When he took the floor of the Senate to reject the Democrats' Jan. 6 Commission, Mitch McConnell may have salvaged his party's chances to recapture the House in 2022. For that commission, being spun as a "bipartisan" effort to learn what "really happened" in the Capitol that fateful day, is a ...

Are the Halcyon Days Over for Joe Biden?

On taking the oath of office, Jan. 20, Joe Biden may not have realized it, but history had dealt him a pair of aces. The COVID-19 pandemic had reached its apex, infecting a quarter of a million Americans every day. Yet, due to the discovery and distribution of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the ...

Has the Backlash Arrived for Police-Bashing?

Within hours of Saturday's shooting in Times Square where three bystanders, including a 4-year-old girl, were wounded, the two leading candidates to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio were on-site. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired captain of the NYPD, and Andrew Yang, who declared: "My ...

Biden vs. Biden on ‘Is America a Racist Country?’

"Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country." So declared Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican, in his televised rebuttal to Joe Biden's address to Congress. Asked the next day what he thought of Scott's statement, Biden said he agrees. "No, I don't think the American people are ...