The “vaccine might be a killer,” a broadcaster warned. It’s “unchristian,” a local clergyman said. When Jonas Salk, physician-scientist, first developed a vaccine for polio, influential radio broadcaster Walter Winchell told his listeners not to take the vaccine because it “might be a killer.” Salk tested the vaccine in secret. The March of Dimes approved the results and a virus...

“Common sense is not that common.”—Voltaire Embed from Getty Images Yup, it’s official, the Republican Party is dead! The party of Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, and God Love ’em, John McCain, is dead from the neck up. On Friday, the Republican National Committee censured (formerly condemned) Republican Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney who “chose to join Nancy...

Moral courage is a rare commodity, rarer still today. Those who stand up—frequently alone—to shine a light on corruption, deceit, and discrimination at the risk of their reputations and livelihoods are worthy of admiration. Republican representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, football coach Brian Flores—all have gone it alone in standing against reprehensible behavior,...

“To meet the challenge of our times, so that we can later look back upon this era not as one of which we need be ashamed but as a turning point on the way to a better America, we must first defeat the enemy within.”—Robert F. Kennedy How close did we come to the end of American democracy on January...

On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy stood before the County Women’s Republican Club in West Virginia and stated, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the...

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana, American writer, and philosopher On the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, President Joe Biden made clear that “The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. . . . [and] held a dagger at...

It’s been little more than a year since the January insurrection where Senators and House members hid from an angry mob of Trump supporters, (And yes, Republicans, a majority of rational people know this. They’re just spending too much time on the bench to take action against what’s likely to come.) Now, with the surge of the Omicron, a variant...

“I’m suggesting, Mr. President, that there’s a military plot to take over the government.” —Seven Days in May “People have got to understand the danger of President Trump and the danger that he posed on that day.” —Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney Embed from Getty Images After the Cuban Missile Crisis, where America came within inches of a nuclear war...

There’s a scene in the movie, The Princess Bride, where the undaunted hero—with all the kindness, smartness, and decency required of heroes—is doing what heroes do: saving his beloved Buttercup from kidnappers. At one point, he chases them to the Cliffs of Insanity, a rocky crag so high and so treacherous it makes Yosemite’s El Capitan look like a picnic....

These are the things . . . that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. — President Donald Trump, in a tweet posted on January 6, the day of the attack on Washington’s Capitol building. “The Mandate of Heaven was...