Steve Bannon blew a dog whistle for constitutional conservatives when he spoke of “deconstructing the administrative state” at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The administrative state has been called “the fourth branch” of government. It involves an alphabet soup of executive agencies that wield legislative, executive and judicial powers and thus run outside of and […]
Op-Eds
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Personal complacency hurts economy
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — the comic-strip character Pogo by Walt Kelly, 1970 WASHINGTON — The same may be true of the economy. So says Tyler Cowen, author of the new book “The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.” Although we’ve recovered from the Great Recession, there […]
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Straight talk needed on immigration
Donald Trump’s roundup of undocumented immigrants is cruel and racist in its execution. His plan to build a wall along the Mexican border would be a massive waste of at least 14 billion taxpayer dollars. But that doesn’t give Democrats a free pass to fudge on the issue of illegal immigration. They need to say, […]
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Defense budget increase still comes up short
Secretary of Defense James Mattis made reviving the U.S. Army his priority project. That meant he was going to give it the budget dollars it needs to be the Army America needs. A lot of people with real expertise in the complexities of national defense agreed with him, but that’s no surprise. Jim Mattis himself […]
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Trump: Old words, new wrapping
SANTA BARBARA, California — The obsession with Donald Trump’s ability to spend one hour in a disciplined relationship with a teleprompter obscured one of his central goals on Tuesday night: He continued to try to scare the country to death. Yes, he lived up to media expectations that he would finally attempt to look “presidential” […]
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Similarities between Trump and Mussolini obvious
Despite his jutting jaw and comical bravado, Donald Trump is not another Benito Mussolini. The Italian dictator had six children, one wife and several mistresses, the most loyal of whom, Claretta Petacci, chose to die with him and was hung upside down in a Milan gas station. Most of Trump’s women have fared better. On […]
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What kind of witnesses shall we be?
There is a strip mall across the street from Auschwitz. From the commandant’s house at Plaszow it’s a short walk to McDonald’s. Belzec is in a residential neighborhood. I didn’t expect that. In 2005, when I joined an interfaith pilgrimage to these camps where the Holocaust happened, it kept surprising me to find them located, […]
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Hey, Sean Spicer, take a chill pill
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer might owe Melissa McCarthy a thank-you note. The actress who mocked Spicer in her “Saturday Night Live” caricature of his angry, anti-media persona seems to have breathed new life into the man — as only a woman could do? To his credit, Spicer didn’t curl up in […]
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A way toward better relations with the press
Before becoming a newspaper columnist I was a broadcast news reporter for local TV stations and occasionally appeared on the NBC radio and television networks. I have some experience at being on the receiving end of hostilities directed at the media. At a pro-Nixon, pro-Vietnam war rally I covered in the early ’70s, a demonstrator […]
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Bannon promises ominous-sounding "new political order"
WASHINGTON — Just when you despair that only chaos animates the Trump administration, along comes Steve Bannon, the White House ideologue, to offer the Rosetta Stone illuminating what this circus is all about. And when you realize what Trump & Co. might really be up to, your despair turns to alarm. There is no way […]