After more than a week, we are still building an impression of the new House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson. Moderates like me, and others to my left, will not find much common ground with the Republican from northwest Louisiana on issues. Nonetheless, I don’t want Johnson to fail. I want him to change. And there […]

In Senate testimony on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that antisemitism was reaching “historic levels.” “In fact,” he said, “our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.” Consider this: Jewish Americans, all of 2.4% […]

“It’s all happening at the Zoo.” – Simon and Garfunkel Washington went to the National Zoo en masse last weekend to catch sight of its three most beloved residents: the family of giant pandas. They are Papa Tian Tian, Mama Mei Xiang and “little miracle” Xiao Qi Ji, a pandemic male baby born in 2020. […]

Rep. Jared Golden’s about-face on gun laws is not surprising. He is a Democrat representing Lewiston, ME, still convulsed by a mass shooting that took 18 lives. Formerly against tightening the laws, Golden now wants a ban on semiautomatic weapons. One can understand why elected officials in rural areas, even in generally liberal states, would […]

Mike Johnson, the four-term Louisiana representative just elected as House speaker, makes a pleasant first impression. That may be why his fellow Republicans chose such an untested politician, with no obvious qualifications, to fill that demanding post. Or they may have simply succumbed to exhaustion and embarrassment after the procedural fiasco that left Congress in […]