The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — While it may seem easy to be lulled into a spring stupor with the fine cool weather in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, it is hard to avoid going into shock with all the strange news coming out of the Trump administration. Around here they…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Are you sick and tired of living in a land of idiocy and mediocrity? What if I told you there is a way to escape it and see excellence rise to the top? The answers are right in front of our faces, like a long pass for…
By Robert Reich – The question is no longer whether there are grounds to impeach Donald Trump. It is when enough Republicans will put their loyalty to America ahead of their loyalty to their party. Trump’s statements last week about his firing of former FBI director James Comey provide ample evidence that Trump engaged in…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — The political intrigue surrounding President Donald J. Trump and his fascination with Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin and Russian money hit a new benchmark on Tuesday when the president announced the firing of F.B.I. director James B. Comey. The comparisons to President Richard M. Nixon’s…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – CAMP DAVID, Ala. — Let me paint a picture for you of where we are this Sunday morning, on day 108 of the Tragic Era of Trump. We were sitting around last night on the back yard deck waiting on the chicken thighs to cook (no we…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Not since George W. Bush’s 100 day losing war with Iraq based on bad intel has America suffered such days of grief as the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. For those who are too young to remember or who somehow rode out the Bush years…
By George Lakoff – The enormous role played by science — especially government-sponsored science — in our everyday lives is barely appreciated. Start with modern medicine. We, the public, paid for it through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and research universities where the medical researchers, surgeons, doctors and nurses were trained, and where tools…
By Norman Solomon – After Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to lip-sync economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had led to a catastrophic defeat. In the aftermath, the party’s progressive base — personified by Bernie Sanders —…
By Joe Romm – Amidst backlash and subscription cancellations for hiring extreme climate science denier, colunnist Bret Stephens, the New York Times offered a stunning defense: There are “millions of people who agree with him.” With that ‘logic’, the Times could hire as a columnist former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke — or…
By Robert Reich – The starkest difference between dictatorships and democracies is that democracies are ruled by laws, and dictatorships are ruled by dictators. The “rule of law,” as it’s often referred to, stands for laws that emerge from a process responsive to the majority, that are consistently applied, and are applicable to everyone regardless…
By Robert Reich – By my count, there are now four grounds to impeach Donald Trump. The fifth appears to be on its way. First, in taking the oath of office, a president promises to “faithfully execute the laws and the constitution.” That’s Article II Section 2. But Trump is unfaithfully executing his duties as…
By Robert Reich – When Donald Trump was running for president, he talked a lot about putting people back to work. And one of the industries he focused on most was the coal industry. He even put on a hard hat and waved around a pick axe to show how much he loved coal. But…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Do you wake up in the morning, make the coffee, crank up your computer and look at your Facebook news feed and ever feel confused about what’s really going on in the world? Don’t feel bad. You are not alone. Rapid changes in technology over the past…
By Robert Reich – House Speaker Paul Ryan, in his press conference following the demise of his bill to replace Obamacare, blamed Republicans who had failed to grasp that the GOP was now a “governing party.” “We were a 10-year opposition party, where being against things was easy to do,” said Ryan. “You just had…
Editor’s Note: In President Barack Obama’s final two press conferences and his farewell address from Chicago, he advised Democrats to learn how to talk to average, working people like the ones who voted for Donald Trump. Now there is an academic who has solid advice for how to do just that, George Lakoff. Watch this…
Donald Trump’s presidency is just one element of our disintegrating democracy. By Russ Feingold – Today, less than two months into a new administration, we are now facing the biggest crisis of legitimacy of our democracy in a generation or more. But the crisis has been building for years. Normally, our democracy is considered the…
By Robert Reich – Trump and his White House don’t argue on the merits. They attack the credibility of the institutions that come up with facts and arguments they don’t like. They even do it preemptively. Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer warned that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office couldn’t be trusted to…
By Robert Reich – Early Saturday morning, March 4, the 45th president of the United States alleged in a series of tweets that former president Barack Obama orchestrated a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap Trump’s phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election. Trump concluded that the former president is…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — Partisan political prosecutions have a long history in the system of jurisprudence in the United States, in spite of what judges, lawyers and politicians want the public to believe. Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of it. Although over the past couple of decades,…
By Robert Reich – As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically do 7 things: 1. They exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a “landslide” even after losing the popular vote. They criticize any finding that they or co-conspirators stole the election. And they repeatedly claim…
