WHILE I HAVE ON OCCASION TOUCHED BRIEFLY on the role of Charles and David Koch, in the creation of the labyrinthine confusion of webs — social, political and financial — that constitute the conservative right in American politics today, I thought to do so with a bit more focus at this point. (Special note: My […]

LIKE MILLIONS OF OTHER AMERICANS, I was thrilled to hear a couple of years ago that something was being done to try and help low-income people and families afford health care insurance. When “Obamacare” — the nickname for the Affordable Care Act — finally went live on Oct. 1, I was eager to see if […]

SINCE I’VE NOT MADE IT A PARTICULAR SECRET in this column that I am a Catholic, I thought it would be appropriate to share some thoughts and impressions about the current head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, and the first few months of his papacy. In observing Francis, we have heard intermittent expressions of […]

IN LAST WEEK’S COLUMN, I asked an important question: Has the United States become ungovernable as a single, unified entity? The question arose in my mind because of the tense wait, as I wrote that column, to see whether Republicans in the House of Representatives were actually going to allow the United States to default […]

ROOTS OF THIS INTELLECTUAL POLARITY reach back into Medieval scholasticism amid heated, often deadly conflict when involving papal positions. In different forms and varied contexts, versions of this argument extended farther back into disputes between the Greek philosophers and sophis or rhetors, as Romans called them. Addressing the history, condition and prospects of the Republican […]

By Angelina Hamilton THE PURPOSE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT is to protect the freedom of the citizens of the United States of America to express themselves. It protects our freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and our freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Every person has their own opinion regarding these […]

AS I WRITE THIS, Congress is still debating whether to destroy the U.S. economy — and in the process blow up the rest of the world — to stop President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. They are risking an economic crisis that would make 2008 look like a minor credit crunch, a crisis that would […]

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two foci. Facts are one, ideas are the other.” — Victor Hugo HUGO’S NOBLE EFFORT, “LES MISERABLES,” speaks volumes. As he put it at the time, “I don’t know whether it will be read by everyone, but it is meant for […]

AS WE TUNE IN TO THE DRAMA IN WASHINGTON, we are transfixed by the anguish of John Boehner, who has failed once again to persuade President Obama that without his cooperation in obliterating the Affordable Care Act, those tea partiers will have poor John for lunch. Given the years Boehner has selflessly devoted to achieving […]

“As we grow older, the world becomes stranger, The pattern more complicated of dead and living; Not the intense moment, isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment; And not the lifetime of one man only, But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.” — T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets (East […]