ON TAP

I don’t claim to know how many elections have been held in Europe’s democratic nations since 1945, but I’m quite certain that Sunday’s European Parliament election featured the worst performance by socialist, social democratic, and labor parties since the end of World War II—and possibly since the end of World War I. In the U.K., […]

Question: what do you do when the president of the United States is a serial, pathological liar as well as an aspiring despot, and the speaker of the House is an entirely sane leader trying to do her job? Answer: You treat them symmetrically, as rival, squabbling politicians. No! That’s the wrong answer. But The […]

Cherri Bustos is running out on Dan Lipinski, but the question is why any Democratic official should be sticking with Dan Lipinski. Bustos is both a member of Congress from an Illinois district that Donald Trump carried in 2016, and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in which post she has pledged to funnel […]

Trump’s categorical denial of any wrongdoing and his wall-to-wall efforts to block all investigations, whether by Congress or in other investigations such as the Deutsche Bank case, adds up to a blanket claim of impunity. As Richard Nixon claimed, if the president does it, it’s legal. Nixon’s contention, of course, was ridiculed and not allowed […]

Earlier in the week, we were hearing from unnamed administration sources about small patrol boats of the Iranian Navy armed with missiles preparing to attack American warships. Are you kidding? Why in the world would Iran pull such a stunt and bring the U.S. into a war? This Trumped-up provocation has all the credibility of […]

According to numerous press accounts, President Trump is set to present a semi-new immigration policy in the next few days. It’s only semi-new because it still contains funding for Trump’s wall and makes no mention of the undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children, leaving them vulnerable to eventual deportation. What is new—supposedly the […]

The other day, I suggested that Special Counsel Robert Mueller commit an act of civil disobedience and testify before Congress despite the objections of the Trump Justice Department, of which he is an employee. I’ve checked with a number of legal scholars, and it’s even simpler than that. He need only resign and he is […]

When The New York Times unearthed ten years of Trump’s tax returns showing losses in excess of $1 billion, Trump indignantly tweeted that this is simply how the real-estate game is played—pile up those paper losses while you make real money. Trump is right about that. The developer scam allows you to take deductions for […]