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The Prosecution Has Made Its Case

From the Left / Susan Estrich /

Did Donald Trump falsify business records to cover up his payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels?

Did he do it to hold onto women voters in the days leading up to the 2016 election?

Reading the daily press accounts of the New York trial leaves little doubt that the prosecution made its case.

Michael Cohen is a liar, convicted as one, but ...Read more

Age. Race. Sexual Orientation. Should Political Expression Be a Protected Class, Too?

From the Left / Ted Rall /

Your boss can't fire you because of the color of your skin. He can't get rid of you because he doesn't like your religion. Federal law protects you against employment discrimination based on your sex, race, pregnancy status, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information or (if you are over 40) age.

Should...Read more

Don't Ask Alito to Recuse -- Tell Him to Resign

From the Left / Joe Conason /

The conspiratorial antics of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, as exposed recently in the national media, have raised the gravest doubt about his bias in matters before the Supreme Court -- and provoked demands that he recuse himself from any case concerning former President Donald Trump, the 2020 presidential election or the Jan. 6 ...Read more

Graduates Need To Know That Life Is Bigger Than Your GPA

"Your success in high school does not determine your success in life." My high school English teacher Chuck Keller told me this, and it was exactly what teenage me needed to hear. Chuck was right, and I'm here to pass on this little nugget to young adults today.

It's graduation season, and society has a way of making kids think that their ...Read more

Diners and AI

From the Left / Marc Munroe Dion /

Artificial Intelligence is a huge concern among people in my business because first of all, we think we're gonna lose our jobs, plus we think AI will produce mediocre writing, and we don't want to lose our jobs.

Also, it's creepy, although it's not nearly as creepy as some of the people I worked with and for during a 40-year stumble through ...Read more

This Era’s Protesters Could Stand to Ask a Few More Questions

From the Left / Clarence Page /

One of the roles we old folks fall into is to wish we could painlessly and conveniently give young people the useful wisdom life has taught us so they won’t have to learn it the hard way.

Such are the thoughts that come to me as I witness the spread of militantly anti-Zionist protests across campuses similar to anti-war protests in the ...Read more

Bill Press: Live from New York! Trump bootlickers on parade

From the Left / Bill Press /

Let’s say you’re a producer for“ Saturday Night Live” and you want to put together a skit lampooning the parade of shameless sycophants showing up at Donald Trump’s trial. You couldn’t come up with a better – or worse – display of buffoonery than we saw this week.

To qualify as a true Trumper – or to make the list of potential...Read more

Trump the Dude? Not Quite

From the Left / Froma Harrop /

"Stormy Daniels Put Trump's Toxic Horniness on Full Display," read a Daily Beast headline. What has really been put on display is Donald Trump's desperate need to portray himself as a hunk with an awesome sex drive. He's done that his entire adult life. Now that he's an obese man of 77, the urgency to come off as a young buck has never been ...Read more

What Voters Don't Know ... Yet

From the Left / Susan Estrich /

The problem with early polls is just that. They are taken early, and they are a snapshot of what voters know and think at the time they are taken. Which may be wrong. Because most of the voters who decide elections -- the so-called swing voters -- pay about as much attention to politics as I do to baseball. Not spring training. Not even the ...Read more

A Rose Helps Quiet the Noise Inside

From the Left / Jamie Stiehm /

My father, Richard, 91, was missing his departed friends and folk, so I suggested planting a memory garden.

Close to his heart was Leon Rosenberg, his friend from Randall School to the University of Wisconsin and medical school. They knew each other from ages 10 to 89, when Leon died. They were born weeks apart: my father on Jan. 22, 1933, ...Read more

God Bless the Nurses. And Please Hurry!

From the Left / Jim Hightower /

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity's Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, "above and before every other duty."

Really -- even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America's corporate-care system...Read more

Clarence Page: Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t run the government after all

From the Left / Clarence Page /

Although I usually find legislative processes to be a good remedy for insomnia, I followed the attempt by the often entertaining — especially when she doesn’t intend to be — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to revive the Hastert rule until it crashed and burned.

House Speaker Mike Johnson easily blocked an ill-planned attempt by his GOP ...Read more

American Gold: At Age 100, Lieutenant Benjamin Inspires Still

From the Left / Jeff Robbins /

If 100 can be said to be the new 70, Lieutenant Alfred D. Benjamin of the Army Air Corps' 384th Bomb Group has to be the expression's poster boy. Ramrod-straight and sharp as the proverbial tack, the Canton, Massachusetts, centenarian is as smart as the salute he gives as he finishes an interview about his service as a B-17 navigator flying 31...Read more

America Needs More Schools Like De La Salle Academy

From the Left / Froma Harrop /

Here we are in Times Square. Maniac lights flash across all horizons. Minnie Mouse and Spider-Man are making the rounds. Packed tour buses inch below the scary headlines orbiting the ABC News building.

And it's only 9:30 on a Monday morning.

But on West 43rd Street, about a block from the heart of chaos, the school day has started on an ...Read more

Clarence Page: DEI on campus and in corporations is due for a change

From the Left / Clarence Page /

Reports of the death of DEI, the widely praised and reviled — take your pick — employment policies to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, have been greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain famously said of reports of his own death.

Still, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in colleges and ...Read more

The Painful Reality of Being an Incarcerated Mother

From the Left / ACLU /

Many of us celebrated Mother's Day over the weekend by remembering or being present with women who raised us, or with our families. But for the more than 190,000 women incarcerated in the United States this weekend, there was no celebration.

Close to 60% of these women serving prison sentences were the primary caregiver of their minor ...Read more

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America’s Second Civil War? It Has Slready Begun

From the Left / Robert B. Reich /

Despite the popularity of the recent movie “Civil War,” we’re not on the verge of a second one. But we are separating into so-called “red” and “blue.” And if Trump is reelected president, he’ll hasten the separation.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade left the issue of abortion to the states, one out ...Read more

No Good Answers

From the Left / Susan Estrich /

There are no good answers to the current situation in the Gaza War. President Joe Biden is trying to use a pause in weapons shipments to force Israel to do more to protect civilians against "collateral damage" that a bombing campaign in Rafah would no doubt entail. But United States military officials admit that that is easier said than done. ...Read more

Criticize Hamas. Criticize Israel 30 Times More.

From the Left / Ted Rall /

It is a truism bordering on a cliche that the Israeli state and Palestinian resistance organizations have inflicted violence upon each other, claiming the lives of thousands of innocent people on both sides. Media coverage of the carnage has been anything but evenhanded, however.

Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Western media ...Read more

Mind-Blowing Corruption -- With More To Come

From the Left / Joe Conason /

Nobody likes Big Oil, a monopolistic and heavily polluting industry with a legendary history of abusing its excessive power that can be traced back over the past hundred years.

But Donald Trump has promised to be the oil industry's best friend -- if its bosses give him a billion dollars.

In the latest instance of the former president's mind-...Read more