“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it . . . ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect...

In September 2009, I posted a commentary with that title with the following opening . . . “During an awards ceremony, a Rap star takes the stage away from one winner and shouts that another should have won. “A political pundit calls the President a racist. “In the middle of the President’s address to a joint session of Congress, a...

In a Q&A session last month after a performance of the Broadway show Company, a woman in the audience was asked to put her mask back on. When she refused, singer Patti LuPone unloaded on her. “If you’re not going to follow the rules, Get The F*** Out of Here!” “I pay your salary!” the woman yelled back before she...

If Attorney General Merrick Garland is looking for grounds for bringing criminal charges against Donald Trump and his allies in their attempts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, he should begin with Tuesday’s compelling testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former local elections worker in Fulton County, Georgia, and end with the shocking statement Trump made to former Acting Deputy...

The third public hearing from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol should serve as a chilling wake-up call to America. Here’s what we learned from the committee’s report, yesterday: – A former federal judge who consulted with an advisor to Mike Pence said that if the vice president obeyed Trump’s orders not to certify...

“The blacklist was a time of evil… [Looking] back on this time…it will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims.” – Dalton Trumbo, Laurel Award acceptance speech delivered to the Writers Guild of America West, April 1970. Note: I will be live-streaming, @jimlichtman, on the January 6...

Tonight, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol will present its case to the public. Over the next few days, the presentation will lay out a timeline of events before and after the attack took place using testimony by many with direct knowledge of events. A New York Times story...

After learning of yet another mass shooting in a fourth-grade Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Golden State Warriors’ Coach Steve Kerr brushed off questions about the upcoming playoff against the Dallas Mavericks to offer a passionate and compelling voice about gun violence in America. “When are we going to do something,” Kerr shouted at his pre-game press conference. “I’m tired....

The lead story in Sunday’s New York Times sums up how far Donald Trump has usurped many Republican state legislatures, political leadership in Congress and how far the Republican party has fallen off the radar of credibility and responsibility to the country. “At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office...

“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” —Richard III, Act I, sc. 1 In March 1954, Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson spoke to a crowd of supporters about the poison that had infected much of the American public by a demagogic United States Senator. “We are witnessing the bitter harvest from the...