Governments, seemingly eager to supply their critics with ammunition, constantly validate historian Robert Conquest: The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. Consider North Carolina’s intervention…
One of the painful realities of our times is how long a political lie can survive, even after having been disproved years ago, or even generations ago.
Dear Mr. President:
From the White House down to city halls in rural hamlets across this country, politicians are using the term “fake news” to discredit anything they encounter in the media that they deem negative or that doesn’t fit their self-interests.
LBJ’s federal interventions created a system in which students are the greatest losers.
Scholars have already debated for decades, and will debate for centuries, the role U.S. policies — military, diplomatic, economic — played in bringing the Cold War to endgame and the Soviet Union to extinction. One milestone was Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative proposal, a t…
After 30 minutes with the household bills, Dad comes to the dinner table. Looking somber, he tells Mom, Junior and Sis, “We’ve got to cut back. We’re spending more than we have.”
I recently heard a stand-up comedian make a joke about dating. They compared the experiences that men have versus women when they go on a Tinder date. They joked that when a man gets ready for a blind date, his biggest worry is that it will be boring. He will have wasted an hour of his life,…
My father, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, has been in politics as long as I can remember.
In the past, Portland was a national leader in a different flavor of nonsense.
The major contenders in the 2018 Class II U.S. Senate nonpartisan special election on Nov. 6 left the state’s premier political stump with very different kinds of momentum.
In 1933, when America’s most famous immigrant settled in Princeton, New Jersey, Franklin Roosevelt tried to invite Albert Einstein to the White House. Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study that had brought Einstein to Princeton, intercepted FDR’s letter b…
“A More Perfect Union.” You know these words, but how often do you stop to think about them? “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the…
The day is coming when marijuana will be sold legally in Mississippi under rules similar to those in place for whiskey, wine and beer.
The number of companies reporting job search candidates ghosting them is on the rise. Ghosting is a term typically used in dating. It happens when you’ve been dating and one of the people stops responding to all communication with no reasons as to why. They may suddenly stop returning calls,…
-- November’s congressional elections will decide which party will control a narcoleptic institution that is uninterested in performing fundamental functions: Only 43 of the 535 House and Senate seats -- ten in the Senate, 33 in the House -- are occupied by legislators who were serving in 19…
According to Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do.” In today’s rapid-paced reactionary world, it appears that many of us are all offended, offensive or both. Spend a little time on Twitter, Facebook or watching mainstream media outlets. Notice how offended or offensive gets the coverage,…
While it’s easy to get caught up in the lunge-and-parry of personality politics in Mississippi’s 2018 congressional elections, the fact is that this election cycle is fraught with issues and concerns that are very real to Mississippi voters and that’s particularly true for Mississippi farmer…
Back in 1883, Teddy Roosevelt wrote an essay on what it takes to be a true American citizen. He did not mince words. “The people who say that they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they are unfit to live in a free community,” he wrote. “Their place is under a despoti…
For three months in 1917, Leon Trotsky lived in the Bronx, just south of the congressional district where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently defeated a 10-term incumbent in a Democratic primary. Because she calls herself a democratic socialist, the word “socialism” is thrilling progressives w…
OK, well, so no one is going to prison over “roadgate.”
I hear from job seekers every day. They’ve been searching for a new job for ages. When they finally land it, they have a concern that’s not about money. It’s their office setup.
If there were a contest for the most stupid idea in politics, my choice would be the assumption that people would be evenly or randomly distributed in incomes, institutions, occupations or awards, in the absence of somebody doing somebody wrong.
I wrote my first column for the New York Daily News 10 years ago. It was August, and a little-known Alaska governor had just been tapped as John McCain’s vice presidential candidate.
The Federal Elections Commission second quarter campaign finance reports are in and for State Sen. Chris McDaniel, the reports are everything he’s been telling us they would be in his steady drumbeat of fundraising emails called the “Remember Mississippi Moneybomb.”
A good vacation can be one of the most relaxing things you can do for yourself. Whether you prefer the beach, camping, or grilling out in your backyard, down time is something we all need. Unfortunately, we’re not all getting this much needed time to relax. Can you relate?
A good vacation can be one of the most relaxing things you can do for yourself. Whether you prefer the beach, camping, or grilling out in your backyard, down time is something we all need. Unfortunately, we’re not all getting this much needed time to relax. Can you relate?
Someone asked me how I’d sum up my views on Congress. It was a good question, because it forced me to step back from worrying about the current politics of Capitol Hill and take a longer view.
“This human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.” —Peter De Vries
As things stood, there was no red meat on the table if, as expected, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves squared off with Attorney General Jim Hood in next year’s contest to be governor of Mississippi.
In Illinois, as in all the rest of the states, it’s legal to carry a concealed handgun, unless you’re at a ballgame or in the library or a number of other designated public places. But one of those places is not the corner of 71st Street and Jeffery Boulevard, in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood.
You know the Pledge of Allegiance, probably by heart. You may recite it only occasionally, or get the chance several times a week. Sometimes, I’m guessing, you say it mechanically, and other times filled with deep meaning.
A weekend visit to the Neshoba County Fairgrounds demonstrates that for the politicians and their supporters, the buildup to “Mississippi’s Giant Houseparty” is long since underway. Political signs and placards already dot trees, fence posts and power poles along the seven-mile stretch of Hi…
It is a prudential axiom: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. This reflects the awareness that things can always be made worse, and the law of unintended consequences, which is that they often are larger than and contrary to intended ones. As baseball reaches the all-star break amid lamentatio…
There are many definitions of patriotism. Mark Twain said patriotism means supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.
When governor, Haley Barbour dominated the Legislature. He defied observers (me) who pointed out that when members of the 1890 House and Senate wrote the state 1890 Constitution, they assured themselves the power to slap silly any governor silly who tried to thwart their wishes.
Do you ever feel like you’re struggling to take your career to the next level? If so, you’re not alone. Many of the job seekers I speak to each day are struggling with similar feelings. They have not received the achievements they expected to get by now. Perhaps they’re coming up on an impor…
America has military forces committed to locations around the world. About 15 percent of our million man armed forces are so deployed. There are about 800 installations and bases in 70 countries across the globe, with the largest numbers in Asia and Europe but many in the Middle East and Africa.
During an impromptu press conference at last weekend’s G7 summit in rural Quebec, U.S. President Donald Trump described America as “the piggy bank that everybody’s robbing.” It was actually a perfect metaphor for taxpayers in G7 countries.
For 17 days straight, the whole world has held its collective breath as search and rescue experts from around the world converged on a remote, humid jungle cave complex in Thailand to rescue 12 little boys and their soccer coach.
After much prime time buildup, Trump announced Monday night his nomination of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court to succeed the retiring Presiding Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The escalating trade war between the United States and China poses crucial, though unanswerable, questions: Is this the beginning of the end of the post-World War II international trading system or will the present arrangements survive, as they have for 70 years?
Close your eyes. Imagine being a politician in a cash-strapped state. Imagine your people — those who voted for you based on your firm stance against tax increases — are going to be hit up for another $100 million every year. Imagine you get the money to spend as you wish, but your purity is…
It’s often said that employees don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses. Can you relate? If you’ve ever left a job, there’s a good chance you might agree with this idea.
Is there a link between this summer’s historic extreme weather events and the political power of radical-right-wing billionaires and corporate plutocrats? Yes.
From time to time, I take stock of progress made on all fronts in my beloved State of Mississippi.
Driving back from a weekend in Lower Alabama, my friend Lee Weiskopf sent a text just as we were leaving Orange Beach telling me that former Lt. Gov. Brad Dye had died. Before we made it past the Mobile Bay Bridge, Lee texted again: “Now, we’ve lost Paul Ott, too.”
Every so often, I jot down a list of the things that discourage me about our country. There’s the widespread disregard for our core values of tolerance and mutual respect, for instance. Our declining national optimism. Our relaxed attitude toward fixing our election machinery, overseeing fin…
Judges are supposed to be unleashed to wield the First Amendment as a weapon.
Did a teacher make you memorize the Declaration of Independence, or at least the first few paragraphs? With apologies, here’s an update … if written by today’s political leaders:
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