Nikki Haley’s surprise resignation as ambassador to the United Nations seems not to have attracted the media attention it merits, especially as she is the only major player in the Trump administration to call it quits so soon before the midterm elections. Reporters apparently accepted her excuse that she was tired after (almost) two years there and six years as governor of South Carolina. I think that is patently false – and if true, a complete insult to women who work year in and year out without falling to fatigue. Imagine the ridicule if Hillary had said that!  Read More 

I was wrong. In my last two columns, I predicted that justice would triumph and we would not have a man with Brett Kavanaugh’s record of partisanship, arrogance, and temper on the Supreme Court. I was too optimistic, too willing to believe that Jeff Flake of Arizona and/or Susan Collins of Maine would separate themselves from Mitch McConnell’s narrow Republican majority. In the end, only one did – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. She paired with the guy whose daughter’s wedding was the day of the hurried vote, and with the defection of West Virginia Democrat Joe Machin, the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh by two votes.  Read More 

Everywhere I’ve gone recently, everyone wants to talk about Brett Kavanaugh. My timetable was a little hasty when I predicted in my last column that he would be toast by the weekend, but I’m sticking with the general point. The potential loss to Republicans if their women desert the party over this issue is not worth it to them. Because there is no principle at stake other than a victory for Trump, party leaders should force Kavanaugh to withdraw. They did that in the 1974 midterms, when they forced Richard Nixon to walk away. Both men were endowed with lifelong arrogance that made them assume they were axiomatically entitled to do what they wanted to do, but with Kavanaugh it is simpler and can be expressed in just two words: judicial temperament. He displayed temper instead, and his smart-mouth treatment of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobucher alone should disqualify him.  Read More 

It’s only Monday, yet I (perhaps foolishly) am taking the risk of predicting that by the time you read this on Friday, Kevin Kavanaugh will be consigned to the wastebasket of history. My prediction is reinforced by the very quiet, almost hush-hush news that the Current Occupant signed a major part of the 2019 budget last weekend – sans his threatened October shutdown and sans his cherished Mexican Wall. Someone in the White House seems to be forcing him to see that his party is going down in a landslide waterfall this fall, and they are trying to cut their losses.  Read More 

I had the highest grade in a class of 55, with 50 young men and five young women. Instead, when the professor pointed this out to the inferior fifty guys, I was very embarrassed. I never even considered the field as a career. I’m still glad of that in a way, given the daily struggle with discrimination it would have been. There’s enough of that among historians; it would have been overwhelming with economists. I also remember my second full-time job, which was as a researcher and writer at an investment firm. When I left for teaching, I was asked to train my replacement, an inexperienced guy who started at a pay level higher than mine.  Read More 

There’s been no White House acknowledgment that its policy of separating children from their parents smacks of Nazi concentration camps, but others seem to be catching on. Nor are they all bleeding-heart liberals, but instead business minds who are seeing that the administration’s anti-immigrant bias is having unintended consequences. This is particularly true in terms of labor shortages for menial jobs that Americans (most of them Trumpers) refuse to do, but also in new unforeseen ways.  Read More 

I had an e-mail from Norman Lear a few days before the Florida primary and was surprised to realize that he still is alive. At 96, the creator of “All in the Family” justly deserves the reward of seeing this year’s amazing elections that, at least on the Democratic side of the ledger, are being won by through-going liberals. You know that Archie Bunker would be horrified by the nomination of Andrew Gillum, while Gloria and Mike would be dancing across the living room.  Read More 

The irony of this timing: My friend Debbie Katt, who is the Democratic nominee for Florida House District 57 (Valrico and surroundings), was in a meeting on gun safety when phones started ringing with the news about Sunday’s shooting in Jacksonville. She said it felt surreal. I’m sure it did. It probably felt helpless, too, as that’s where we seem to be with mainly thoughts and prayers from our legislative “leaders.” Debbie had been in the House gallery last spring, when lawmakers voted not to even discuss the issue – despite the fact that Parkland students had made the long trip there.  Read More 

Read this section to the end, please, where I have a question I’ve not seen addressed. The latest from the Current Occupant of the White House is that he is going to take away the security clearances of several top former officials, most of them in intelligence agencies, but also the former ambassador to the UN and a couple of deputy attorneys general he doesn’t like. He’s already revoked that of former CIA Director John Brennan. He didn’t follow statutory procedure on that, which requires that a person whose clearance is being questioned gets notice and has a legal right to respond. Instead, Brennan found out after the fact, when a friend phoned him.  Read More 

I found a book with that title in my sister’s cabin last May and just now have finished it. Someone gave it to her before she went to Cuba near the end of the Obama administration, so I was surprised that “Resurrection in El Salvador” is the only Latin American country included. That’s typical of Rick Steves, though: if you watch his television documentaries, you know he doesn’t like the restricted tours that have been pretty much mandatory in Cuba. Of course, he originally made his living by guiding European tourists, but… Read More