Opinion

The alliance between the United States and Europe is broken. That much became clear over three days of intensive discussions in Munich last month. To be sure, it can be fixed. But that will take a fundamental readjustment in policy and direction on both sides of the Atlantic.Every year, top U.S. and European officials gather in February at the Munich Security Conference to assess the state of their alliance. The tone was set by conference organizers, who coined the phrase “Westlessness” as the theme for the conference. Both the world and the West itself, they suggested, were becoming less west...

The email from Mr. B did not particularly stand out. Like many, he took issue with a column I had written explaining why African Americans would vote for Mike Bloomberg over Donald Trump in a presidential matchup.“Im glad your the voice for all of the American colored population. #TRUMP2020,” he wrote, exactly how it is printed.After reading it, I did what I always do when I receive emails containing racial epithets or other hateful remarks.“Don’t bother emailing me again,” I fired back. “The use of ‘colored’ crossed the line. You’re blocked.”But Mr. B’s response was different from the combati...

Joe Maguire, a Manhattan College alum whose life and career we admire, is out as President Trump’s acting director of national intelligence for committing an unpardonable sin. He told the unvarnished truth.A president needs confidence in his appointees. Trump apparently has more trust in Maguire’s replacement, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell, despite the fact that he lacks a background in intelligence.But watch that trust evaporate if and when Grenell dares deliver facts the president really doesn’t want to hear.A week ago, a Maguire aide briefed the House Intelligence Committee on a bi...

Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse When you ain't got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal “Like a Rolling Stone” – Bob DylanWe’ve all heard about the tragedies of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix’s conversations, Lou Reed’s affairs, Mick Jagger’s antics; even we can talk aboutPaul McCartney’s favorite films. But what do we know about Bob Dylan?The man is a mystery. After 1964, only three years into his career, he stopped giving explanations to the press and became a dark figure. His genius is impenetrable. He never allowed his music to f...

Rep. Devin Nunes’ war against the free press reached a new low on Tuesday when he barred The Fresno Bee from covering a major water forum in Tulare, Calif.The forum covered matters of crucial public interest. The chief executive officer of Friant Water Authority, a public agency, moderated the event. David Bernhardt, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, also attended. Yet despite the fact that the McClatchy reporters had reserved tickets, Nunes’ staff banned them.“The Fresno Bee learned at 10 a.m. Tuesday that its reporters would not be allowed to cover the event, after receiving ...

Yoo hoo! Elizabeth Warren fans! Over here!Yes, we’re still here. Gather round. Scooch on in. We’ve been shoved into this little corner at the edge of the stage, but we’re not leaving yet. The pundits’ wind is bitter cold, and history is giving us the wary eye, and our friends are sniffing, “Get over it.”Nevertheless, we persist. So does Elizabeth Warren.It’s not that we Warren fans dislike the other Democratic candidates. Or maybe it’s better to say that not all of us dislike all of them. Go Amy. Go Pete. Go Anybody Who Can Beat the Foul-Mouthed Autocrat-in-Chief.What we don’t like? It’s the w...

Maybe this wasn’t exactly the way Neil Postman wrote it up in 1985. After all, Instagram and Twitter were unfathomable in a world where the internet was still a closely held secret among computer-science geeks. Yet that was the world in which the late New York University media critic wrote a book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death” that essentially predicted Donald Trump, the drug of 24/7 cable news and … everything, decades before they actually occurred.But Postman would have inherently understood multibillionaire Mike Bloomberg’s surging 2020 presidential campaign and what it says about an A...

ST. THOMAS, U.S. Virgin Islands — The U.S. Virgin Islands opened up a new and explosive front in the battle over Jeffery Epstein’s $600 million estate last week when it included one of the sex offender’s companies, Southern Trust, as a co-defendant in the case.With that late amendment, the attorney general’s office seemed to be painting a target on some of the island’s most prominent figures, including Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., and a former first lady, Cecile de Jongh.Social media and the island’s legal community erupted with speculation that the powerful officials might get dragged into the mire...

Over and over, most recently in his State of the Union address, President Trump has declared that “poverty is plummeting” and that he is weaning people off food stamps.Yes, we are rebounding from a recession, a trend that began well before he took office. And indeed, his administration has sought to toss millions of Americans off safety net programs like food stamps – once again a target for cuts in his 2021 budget.But is Trump really helping the ‘Little Guy’?“It’s not that he came up with a policy that helps people get through challenging times and get the support they need to move off the ro...

John Bolton never had any intention of testifying in Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. And he knew he would never have to.Trump’s former national security adviser threw Democrats a sucker punch by pretending that he was noble enough to stand up against his old boss and the entire Republican Party. Turns out, he’s a selfish manipulator — just like Trump. And the American people got played.Bolton is the only person who got anything worthwhile out of the drama that ensued over his possible testimony. His book sales likely will soar through the roof. And with juicy tidbits already out in th...

Imagine that it’s January 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt is delivering his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. The planet is literally on fire from the Big One, World War II. Nazi Germany has overrun France and Adolf Hitler’s regime has been raining bombs on London for months. Japan has overrun much of Asia.But FDR begins his speech with a long riff on how great the American economy has done under his presidency — including some gratuitous swipes at his predecessor Herbert Hoover, even though it’s been eight years since Hoover left the Oval Office. Ther...

After the U.S. Senate acquitted President Donald Trump of wrongdoing, he continued to assert that he did absolutely nothing wrong. This is almost certainly not true. In fact, his acquittal was supported by the compliance of a significant number of Republican senators who conceded that Trump did, indeed, do something wrong — their favorite word for it was “inappropriate” — but that what he did wasn’t so bad that it warranted removal from office.Which raises an interesting question: Have we slouched into an era in which we too readily indulge bad behavior and reduce the punishments that we impos...

I always hoped this day would never come and that the proud history of past Republican presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower would save the party. Unfortunately, that is not where we are. Today the Republican Party has died. It has been replaced by a soulless beast that cares about neither the people nor the planet. Its only purpose is to grow and takeover its host - the United States of America.The party died when the Senate voted against witnesses. It was the last chance for the leadership to actually lead and provide an essential check on what has now become unfet...