A New Wrinkle

‘Sallie told David who told Harry who told Joe that Sergie said’… It sounds like gossip flying around a sewing circle of old women but it wasn’t – it was a story about Donald Trump and the Russians told by a former MI6 agent in a ‘report’ that caught fire (on one website) then rolled…

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Trump Trepidation

Studies say the most depressing day of the year is today – the third Monday in January. The holidays are over, winter has set in and it’s, well, Monday. But this year many, and maybe most, Americans say the most depressing day will be the third Friday, when Trump is inaugurated. Both days come this…

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Hope vs Hate

President Obama’s farewell speech drew the lines clearly. His hope versus Trump’s hate. Reason and oratory versus tweets and insults. Building people up versus tearing them down. Bringing us together versus driving us apart. Graceful equanimity in the face of bitter partisan attacks versus a narcissistic imperative to attack any critic, doubter or questioner. Ultimately,…

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The Professor

Looking back the first warning sign was his crowing: For years, the professor wrote, he’d traveled the world. He’d set up elections in strange places like Sudan. Along with his Danish colleague he’d designed the first model – measuring over 50 moving parts of the political process – to determine whether elections were fair. He’d…

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Pray for our country

Trump hasn’t been inaugurated. The Republican Congress convened just last week. But they’ve already taken strong stands against two things they clearly oppose: Intelligence Ethics.

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The Clash

The election proved just about everyone’s fed up with Washington politics but the first day of the new Congress the Washington Politicians proved they didn’t get the message: Foolishness usually starts at the top in Congress but this time it started at the bottom with the Republican back-benchers who, out of a clear blue sky,…

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The Times and Trump

When North Korea said it was going to test an intercontinental ballistic missile that would reach the U.S. Donald Trump grabbed his Twitter machine and roared, ‘North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!’ Reading Trump’s tweet…

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Darkness is Bi-partisan

The other morning laying in bed, opening John’s Gospel I read: Truth is the road to light. Later that morning in my office opening the newspaper I read a new poll (by The Economist) said half of Donald Trump’s voters believe President Obama was born in Kenya (even though Trump now says that’s not so)…

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A Breach of Trust?

Along with other protestors the professor was evicted from the State Senate gallery by the police. Then, a day or so later, he published an op-ed but he didn’t argue the legislature stripping Roy Cooper of his power was illegal – he called it a breach of trust. Since the majority of people had voted…

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A Twitter Brawl

On Christmas Day an editor at Buzzfeed News contacted Sean Spicer the RNC spokesman and Spicer tweeted back: “When you asked me if that Trump/”new King”/Jesus comparison was intentional: I hope you were kidding.” It was too late. A brawl had already broken out on Twitter with a legion of tweeters – like ‘Sentient Space…

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