In 1814, First Lady Dolley Madison helped hide the White House’s famous portrait of George Washington from the British when they burned and sacked the capital. But if the current pack of brigands raiding DC has its way, by the time they’re done,...

The Moyers team has been in the fight for net neutrality from the very beginning. Our documentary Net at Risk was perhaps the first on television to alert the nation to the danger of a corporate takeover of the internet. When the mainstream...

Amid all the craziness surrounding Roy Moore’s race for the US Senate and the seeming willingness of Alabama’s likely voters to send a man of such dubious merit and morality to Capitol Hill (where, admittedly, the bar already is pretty damned...

Looking back at the last tumultuous year, to me, one of the saddest aspects of the Trump candidacy and presidency is that both in part were built from one of the basest of human impulses: revenge. We’re taught that ideally, the desire to run for...

Looking back at the last tumultuous year, to me, one of the saddest aspects of the Trump candidacy and presidency is that both in part were built from one of the basest of human impulses: revenge. We’re taught that ideally, the desire to run for...

On Sunday’s edition of CNN’s Reliable Sources, guest Bruce Bartlett referred to the right-wing hosts of Fox & Friends as “those three idiots.” This gave show host Brian Stelter the vapors, but it was simply Bartlett being Bartlett: blunt,...

As language takes a beating from the president, a book about Churchill and Orwell reminds us how potent skilled rhetoric can be.

A post-surgical convalescence has held me captive to the 24/7 news cycle more than usual so I’ve been far too immersed than is healthy in the concurrent sagas of Donald Trump versus the National Football League and the United States Commonwealth...

Gather around, everyone, and let me tell you a story about rules. And greed and hypocrisy. Once upon a time in America, there was something called the Fairness Doctrine. Approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1949, this rule...

On 9/11, as the World Trade Center collapsed and the Pentagon was in flames, Jo Moore, an adviser to one of British prime minister Tony Blair’s Cabinet members, sent a short email to her boss’ press office: “It is now a very good day to get out...

This presidency is unconstitutional. The Constitution says you have to be at least 35 to serve in our highest office and our incumbent tantrum-in-a-suit is emotionally 6 years old. Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump held a press conference at which...

Enough.   We have a president who is emotionally challenged and empathy-free, who on Saturday read from a prepared statement of concern and condemnation, incapable of speaking genuinely from the heart, apparently because he knows that those who...

You’ve probably heard the story. It’s said that in ancient Rome, the emperor had a member of the Praetorian Guard who, amid all the pomp and all the accolades, would stand behind him and murmur: “Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.” Sadly, the...

Fish stinks from the head, as the ancient Greeks first said, and right now there’s a 250-pound flounder stinking up the White House and all those around the place. Mark Shields said it well on the PBS NewsHour Friday night: “Everybody, I can...

A tune was running through my head all this past Fourth of July weekend, and it wasn’t “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” No, the earworm that afflicted me was the opening number from the 1980 musical Barnum, a Broadway extravaganza that glorified the...