At a February 28 political rally, President Trump said, “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. … This is their new hoax.” In attempting to correct his meaning, Trump later said, “The ‘hoax’ was used with respect to Democrats and what they were saying. It was a ‘hoax,’ what they were saying.” No one is clear on what Trump was saying....

As the CDC and Trump Administration officials struggle to get on top of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday that the impact of the virus “will get worse before it gets better.” “I can say we will see more cases,”...

Why can’t politicians just admit when their wrong? One answer is that such an admission is perceived as a sign of weakness that the other side will exploit. Growing up in Catholic schools on the east coast, the brothers were tough, but the nuns were tougher. If you even whispered the wrong thing, the penalty was immediate. It’s sad to...

Seventy former U.S. senators – Democrats and Republicans – wrote an open letter to their current colleagues in the Senate about the abdication of their Constitutional duties. Background – As reported by The Hill (Dec. 2019), “This is the pile of House-passed bills, 90% bipartisan, dead on [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell’s desk in the Senate #LegislativeGraveyard,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse...

Under a cloud of simmering fear, Senator Joseph McCarthy, absent any real evidence, announced to the American public that communists were working inside the federal government. During 1954’s Senate hearings investigating the Wisconsin Senator’s blatant character assassinations, one exchange was particularly noteworthy. Following McCarthy’s accusation that counsel for the committee, Joseph Welch, placed a member and communist from his own...

In his 1922 book, Public Opinion, journalist and political commentator Walter Lippmann “…argued that modern mass communication created ‘pseudo-environments’ that thwarted the ability of the average citizen to make political judgments based on facts.” To say Lippmann was ahead of his time is a master understatement, but even the keenly perceptive Lippmann could never have foreseen a tweetaholic in the...

Last Thursday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson handed down her sentence to President Trump’s long time friend and campaign associate, Roger Stone. However, before that sentence was read, Stone, his defense team and Justice prosecutors listened to words not only directed to those in the courtroom, but the American people… ALL Americans. Key passages are worth repeating. ”The defendant isn’t public...

With the 75th Anniversary of “the liberation of Auschwitz [on January 27, the occasion was] marked by events around the world, culminating in a solemn ceremony at the former death camp [that included] dozens of aging Holocaust survivors,” The New York Times reports (Jan. 25). “Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, is worried. “ ‘More and more...

“I am an innocent man. Oh, yes I am, an innocent man.”  – Billy Joel Fresh from his Vindication Tour, Trump quickly pivoted to his Vindictive Tour. Those he deemed disloyal for testifying about the truth of Trump’s “deal” with Ukraine’s Zelensky have, not surprisingly, moved to the top of the president’s enemies litst: * Lt. Col. Vindman, the National...

Note: apologies to readers who were expecting a different commentary. I’m tabling it to Friday. Yesterday, I received a rundown from our citizen reporter, Stephen Ambra, on the ground in Concord, New Hampshire. In past elections, Ambra has described “the gauntlet” that he and other voters face in front of the polling station, where acolytes for candidates holding signs politely...