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The Impossibility of Impeachment
Polling outfits routinely ask historians and political scientists to rate the presidents from worst to best. It’s an inherently frustrating exercise. Does “greatness” depend on what a chief executive...
View ArticleThe Conspiracy to Discredit Brazil’s Left
On Sunday evening, The Intercept published a series of incendiary articles and documents purporting to expose massive problems of unethical behavior and political motives in Brazil’s Operation Car...
View ArticleOn the Oratory Trail in Iowa
We have reached the stage in the Democratic race when the best candidates have buffed their stump speeches to a shine like a chauffeur polishing the front grill on a Rolls Royce. Every rambling...
View ArticleA Farewell to Arms Deals
If there’s one thing at which the Trump administration excels, it’s finding arcane provisions in federal law to implement its policy vision. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced last month that the...
View ArticleCorruption Is the Tie that Binds for Trump-Era Republicans
A strange thing has happened over the past month or so: Senate Republicans have begun to stand up to President Trump. Haltingly, tentatively, perhaps, but on things that matter, a bit of spine has been...
View ArticleThe Biggest Barrier to a Leftist Foreign Policy: Democrats
In the last six weeks, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has called for President Trump to invade Venezuela. National Security Adviser John Bolton proclaimed that the Monroe Doctrine is “alive and...
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All Over the Map
Jared Diamond doesn’t use a computer. He relies “completely” on his secretary and on his wife for “anything” requiring one, as he puts it. Diamond also confesses that he lacks the ability to turn on...
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Who Owns the Crusades?
Is there a historical episode less understood by the general public and more urgently in need of clarification than the Crusades? To some on the right, the Crusades prefigured the modern wars that have...
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Climate Change Is the Symptom. Consumer Culture Is the Disease.
To save the planet, mankind must rapidly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. But where should we be reducing those emissions from? What would make the biggest difference?EPAJournalists and...
View ArticleThe U.S. Government Is Utterly Inept at Keeping Your Data Secure
The National Security Agency calls itself “the world leader in cryptology,” deploying its tens of thousands of employees (the exact number is classified, as is its number of unfilled positions) and...
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The Man Who Was Upset
There would be a cartoon, like for kids. Or it might also have been a prime-time cartoon, actually. The situation was fluid, but consider the growth potential. Honestly, the whole notion was...
View ArticleDemocrats Are Losing This Made-for-TV Moment
It’s easy to imagine what Democrats hoped would happen when John Dean, perhaps the most recognizable witness from the 1973 Watergate hearings, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Monday....
View ArticleSomeone Please Tell Joe Biden That Bipartisanship Is Dead
The 2020 presidential race is not just about policy. It’s also about power. Many Democratic candidates, from Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren to Pete Buttigieg, have sketched out how they would...
View ArticleThe Left’s Failure to Envision a World Without Capitalism
There is a common saying on the left, usually attributed to the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” The late...
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Asylum Seekers Struggle to Navigate Trump’s Broken Border Policy
On a Saturday morning in early May, several dozen Central American migrants gathered on a stretch of concrete outside the El Chaparral border crossing, the main point of entry to the United States from...
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Bernie’s Red Vermont
It was in a Burlington coffee shop known as a hangout for “alternative” people—as well as an occasional FBI observation spot for new-left activities—that Bernie Sanders told Greg Guma, the editor of...
View ArticleThe Sneaky Politics of “Natural Law”
On May 30, the State Department announced that it was setting up a Commission on Unalienable Rights to advise the Secretary of State, and “provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such...
View ArticleThe State of Emergency
Among the many ways in which Donald Trump’s presidency has deranged our traditional understanding of the way the world works, there’s what might be termed the great ever-renewable metanarrative of...
View ArticleExposé Entertainment Is the Surprise Hit of the Summer
This week, Jody Rosen published a long investigative article in The New York Times Magazine about a 2008 fire at a Universal Music Group vault that, he showed, consumed a significant portion of the...
View ArticleThe Limits of Outrage Politics
Last Saturday proved to be less of a crescendo and more of a curtain call for France’s gilets jaunes, or Yellow Vests. “Acte XXX,” as organizers called the thirtieth iteration of their protest, made...
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