After five long years (Remember, Trump was the first to announce his own investigation into Obama’s citizenship status in 2011: “I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.” ), Donald J. Trump finally announced, (Sept. 16): “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.” It doesn’t matter to Trump (or sadly, many...

The publication of Colin Powell’s private opinions of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – obtained from hacked e-mails from the former secretary of state’s private e-mail account – is only the latest example of the thorny ethical issues that journalists and media organizations must navigate. In this new universe, everything that’s been hacked appears to be fair game after...

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.                   – John Adams, in his defense of British soldiers wrongly accused of the so-called “Boston Massacre.” In my 2011 e-book, Shameless, I wrote that supporters of political critics Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Glenn...

Ahhhhhh… the cool mountain air, a calm… ripple… of water peacefully moving over the lake. Oh… it’s you! While on summer break, I thought I’d offer a few links to commentaries that garnered the most attention by readers over the past seven months. First place, with the most views thus far, was my three-part series from April, Trust and Confidence,...

One of the many reasons I prefer non-fiction is the simple fact that truth often is stranger than fiction. Our latest example is that great national embarrassment, Donald J. Trump. Time after time, Trump has shown a breathtaking ability to see, read, hear and deduce things that the rest of us mere mortals are either blind to or cannot comprehend....

The day before the Democratic National Convention convened in Philadelphia, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, announced that she will resign after the release of thousands of internal e-mail exchanges among Democratic insiders that demonstrated a clear bias towards Clinton during the primaries. “Many of the most damaging e-mails,” The Washington Post writes (July 25), “suggest the committee...

It’s three days before the Democratic National Convention, one day before Senator Tim Kaine was selected as Hillary Clinton’s VP, and I had been invited to have lunch with the presumptive nominee, herself! Bob, a Clinton surrogate, picks me up at my hotel. “You sure are lucky, Jim. A lot of people would kill for a chance like this.” “Yes,”...

In a televised oral report on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server, F.B.I. Director James B. Comey summed up his department’s findings this way: While the F.B.I. could find no “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence...

Countrywide was one of the greatest companies in the history of this country and probably made more difference to society, to the integrity of our society, than any company in the history of America.  – Angelo Mozilo, co-founder and CEO, Countrywide Mortgage Last Friday (June 24), The New York Times reported that “the Justice Department told Mr. Mozilo, the former...

“My hand was writing out the words: There’s a lady who’s sure, all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven… “I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt out of my seat. “Plant’s own explanation of the lyrics was that it ‘was some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all...