President Trump’s presser on his immigration bill was great news, and for me a matter of a little pride. I had briefed Jared Kushner on the Canadian merit system for legal immigration, and when Trump plugged my 2016 book, The…
The language we choose tells others a great deal about us. For example, my wife jokes that I’m one of the few living speakers of American English who visibly suffers real pain when he accidentally dangles a preposition, or says,…
Trump’s Ace of Trumps. President Trump’s November 1 immigration address (21:13) described America as “a welcoming country” whose generosity to immigrants is without parallel anywhere, but one facing limits on what we can absorb. His main points: (a) America needs immigrants…
“We are going to reach the United States,” declares one Erasmo Duarte, as he and a couple of thousand would-be Americanos hike northward through Mexico toward the Promised Land. With scant appreciation, I’m afraid, as to the non-welcome in store for…
Since 2015, the influx of about 1.4 million Middle East and North African migrants into Germany — almost all of them Muslim — has destabilized the nation’s politics and society. One of them, Ali Bashar, an Iraqi said to be…
In the current political moment, it is all too easy to forget that the people on the other side of any given policy debate — and those being debated — are, just that: people. Not “conservative coots” or “liberal loons.”…
Saturday So, I see it’s “Beat on California Days” again. USA Today had a feature about the “quality of life” of the 50 states recently. California came in dead last. What was first? North Dakota. Then I saw that my…
Now that the Democrats, and their weakened Resistance during flu season, have caved and agreed to stop their much-ballyhooed Schumer Shutdown of the Federal Government, Republicans can look forward to continuing their assignment to lead America. Much is made, disingenuously,…
On now to Chapter MLXII in our Chronicles of National Disarray: “Congress Solves Immigration Perplexity.” Or, far likelier, “Congress Kicks Can Down Road.” With the federal government coming back to listlessness — if not exactly life — Republicans and Democrats…