The ever-Continuing Resolution
In the 1870s, Gustave Flaubert assembled Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, a humorous collection of “received ideas” and clichés then current…
Why Americans fear for Britain
As an American Anglophile, I find it difficult not to look upon the news emanating from Great Britain and despair.…
The three reasons Trump won
Bishop Butler once observed that probability is “the very guide of life.” This is true. It follows that possibility is cheap,…
Trump is Team MAGA’s last chance
Elon Musk has often commented that “if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election.” He often adds that, “far…
Trump and his lawyers take on the Syndicate
Who has better lawyers: Donald Trump or the Syndicate? The fate of the election, and hence the fate of the country, may well come down to the answer to that question. By “the Syndicate” (what I sometimes call “the Committee”),…
Trump calls for America’s New Golden Age at Madison Square Garden
No one with an open mind — you can even scratch the adjective — no sentient sapiens period can have…
Why Kamala Harris will lose
When you look back on the 2024 presidential election and try to understand why it was that Kamala Harris lost,…
A vindication for our polling obsession
One of the entertainments that every election season brings revolves around polling. Every season seems to bring more and more…
Democrats shouldn’t be surprised by Trump’s would-be assassins
What happens when you continually demonize someone as “Hitler,” insist that he is “a dictator” and “a threat to democracy?”…
Facing down the Democratic legal tsunami
Sydney Smith (1771-1845), the great English wit and Anglican divine, once said that he never read a book before reviewing…
Portuguese wines are back
Regular readers will recall my fondness for Lord Falkland’s observation that “when it is not necessary to change, it is…
ABC News is the big loser of the Trump-Harris debate
The main takeaway from the ABC News ambus— er, presidential debate last night? That someone should sue the network for…
There is a little bit of Frank Sinatra in Donald Trump
Unless you are drinking from the cistern that Bill Kristol and his herd top off daily, you will have been…
The ‘real’ Kamala
I write at the end of July, just on the threshold of the “silly season,” “the months of August and…
Don’t be fooled by Tim Walz’s blandness
OK, it’s August 6, the anniversary of the detonation of Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima in 1945. That marked…
We should be grateful that Biden is going nowhere… for now
The question going into Joe Biden’s address to the national from the Oval Office tonight was: will he, having announced…
The Democrats do not care a whit about democracy
The events of the last few days have made incontrovertible something that candid observers have known for some time now:…
Biden ushers in more uncertainty by stepping aside
It’s odd how things that have been widely predicted and even widely anticipated can nevertheless occur with an emotional thunderclap. I…
A more reflective Trump will win in November
Dr. Johnson once remarked that the prospect of hanging in a fortnight concentrates the mind. So, apparently, does being shot. At…
Outdoor wines for the summer
There are some cramped, unimaginative people who — I have been told — maintain that writing about wine is a…
Hit the road, Jack
If you squint, I reckon you could see two bloody corpses that the Secret Service turned over on that roof…
Who’s the real threat to democracy?
Last week at a fundraiser, Joe Biden said that it was time to get beyond his poor performance at his…
The United States cannot afford a 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. president
In 1927, Sigmund Freud published a book about religion called Die Zukunft einer Illusion (The Future of an Illusion). As a contribution to…
What the Supreme Court immunity ruling means for Donald Trump
Yesterday, reviewing last week’s Supreme Court decisions, I noted that the court would probably issue its final opinion of the season, on…
A robust SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity
All is unfolding as I have foreseen. Yesterday, reviewing last week’s Supreme Court decisions and indulging in a little well-earned Schadenfreude…
