So far the American Bar Association has rated eight of Donald Trump’s nominees for the judicial bench as unqualified. The number isn’t unprecedented for a president, but our dear leader has little tolerance for criticism. We shouldn’t be surprised that he has decided to bar the

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I read an article the other day that praised Donald Trump for his extraordinary leadership. The author congratulated the president for his attempts to revive the coal industry, his rollbacks on climate change regulations, his tax reforms that made the super-rich wealthier and his immi

In 2011, I opined  I envied the lifestyle of the monied class. I even speculated that having a butler, a cook, and a chauffeur would be necessary for my declining years. My 105-year house offered a clue.  It required an army of gardeners, plumbers,  roofers, and house painters to k

Recently, I shared an article that argued if the Warren/Sanders wing of the Democratic party didn’t consolidate, the mathematical certainty was Joe Biden would win the nomination. A Sanders supporter wrote back to say he couldn’t trust Warren. She’d once been a Republican. Havin

While in public life, I worked with a district attorney who was a thoughtful man.  His politics leaned toward conservatism, but that bias seldom interfered with the way he aligned facts.  Objectivity of that degree is rare. For many, emotions rule. Upon occasion, he and I discussed

Shakespeare often threw his characters into the green world of the forest.  After stumbling through acres of trees, they eventually discovered their inner selves.  Midsummer Night’s Dream is an obvious example, but the king in King Lear, after being pummeled by a storm, also gains

My father lived with my mother and me until I turned 7.  Every Sunday, he and I would jump into the car, always an Oldsmobile, and we’d drive to the center of town to buy the newspaper.  If the first vendor we met was black, my father drove on, until he came to a white man

I sat down to coffee, recently, with a couple who’d lived in Albania after the  Russians withdrew. The husband was serving as U. S. Ambassador at the time and during our conversation, his wife recounted a story about an event she hosted for some of the country’s political lea

One of my favorite Shakespearian lines comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Puck says to his Lord, “What fools these mortals be.” (Act iii, Scene 2.)  He spoke at a time before psychiatry existed, and no one had coined the term cognitive dissonance disorder.