An earlier essay on today’s dueling accusations of government-sponsored opposition research described past examples of the practice, including how members of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) had assembled investigatory files on all potential GOP presidential candidates going into the 1976…
Opposition research conducted by the government? What a terrifying thought. The very idea that those in power would somehow become so sure of themselves and their right to power that they would direct government agents to conduct research against political…
Comedian Henny Youngman (1906–98) was known as the King of the One-Liners, since his jokes were short, sweet, and very much to the point. Among his most famous was his response to “How’s your wife?,” which was, “Compared to what?”…
In the progressives’ continuing efforts to negate the 2016 election of Donald Trump as our 45th president, they could actually be dreaming of what formerly might have been dismissed as pure fantasy: an impeachment, nunc pro tunc. Nunc pro tunc…
I recently returned from three days in Washington, D.C. — a city consumed by political hatred, unending rumor-mongering and savage news coverage. It was good to come home! It occurred to me that perhaps some poetry might be helpful, to…
This may seem to be a sexist column, but necessarily so. It’s my first essay without allusions to Watergate, which may come as a relief to some. It also contains a sports analogy. See what you think. My only sibling…
I cannot wait to learn more about the identity and motives of the secret whistleblower who figures so prominently in stories of Trump’s phone call with the newly elected Ukrainian president. The narrative that began a month ago, as an…
This is a wonderfully complicated legal essay, as “Things Nixon” can sometimes be — pretty much the epitome of what Professor Karl Llewellyn described in his classic 1930 lectures on the law and law school, titled The Bramble Bush. During…
In case you somehow missed it, the latest Trump outrage is the allegation that he pressured Ukraine’s newly elected president to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, under threat of cutting off American military aid. In what appears to be…