Think about this. Because of Putin’s war against Ukraine, millions of Ukrainian men, women, and children are enduring the harshest conditions imaginable: nightly bombing; an absence of light, heat and water. Ukraine’s health system cannot keep up with the sick and injured. Schools have closed in much of the country. Despite help from European and Western allies, life in Ukraine...

How much anger and rage do five police officers have to have to beat a man to death after being pulled over for a traffic stop? Watching and listening to Tyre Nichols’s plea for help during a police gang attack in Memphis, Tennessee, the most heart-wrenching moment came when Nichols called out to his mother, twice. Nichols’s death is another...

Integrity: firm adherence to a code of moral values—uprightness. A rap star spouts antisemitic and anti-Black remarks and refuses to apologize. A basketball star apologizes for antisemitic remarks only after he was suspended for his actions. A Supreme Court Justice will not step aside from legal decision-making on any issue brought before the court regarding the 2020 election involving the...

That’s Arizona Republican and Speaker of the House . . . correction, former Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers who had been abruptly shown the door by his own Republican Party after Bowers refused to accede to Donald Trump’s wishes and overturn the will of 3.4 million Arizona voters who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. If his...

Of all the books written by historian David McCullough the book I return to is a compilation of his speeches. The American Spirit offers exactly what its title implies and at this moment, we need a big dose of that spirit more than ever. In a speech to Dartmouth College in 1999, McCullough draws inspiration from a line in the...

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” In the depths of the Revolutionary War, George Washington’s troops struggled with disease, hunger, and defeat. What Washington needed was a...

The country is facing a confluence of alarming events that challenge even the best optimists. Thus far, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has held 8 hearings with testimony from key witnesses. Among them: Capitol police, Justice officials, White House aides, state Republican election officials, a conservative judge, a member of the Oath Keepers whose...

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...

The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6 is expected to hear testimony from three top Department of Justice officials on Trump’s push to overturn 2020 election results within the department. I will be live-tweeting at 3:00pm EST and 12:00pm PST: @jimlichtman This is subject to any time change. After the third installment of the...