Writers, politicians, editors, and some of the public rushed to label Robert Mueller’s testimony on Wednesday “a mess” and “a disaster.” They could not be more wrong, unless of course what they wanted was entertainment. Perhaps that’s the problem; The Washington Post has assigned its theater critic to review the Democratic presidential candidates. But government and […]

The author Umberto Eco was uniquely qualified to recognize fascism. He was eleven years old when Italy’s tyrant Mussolini died and the boy read the words “freedom,” “dictatorship,” and “liberty” for the first time in his life. “I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words,” he wrote in a […]

Hello again — I’m writing again for Frank’s blog — until I start my own. Thanks so much for taking the time to read, and all comments are appreciated. — Jan By Jan Warrington The day I thought Donald Trump would be expelled from the roster of 2016 Republican presidential candidates was in July, 2015, when […]

Donald Trump’s attacks on four freshmen congresswomen of color—his use of the centuries-old insult to the unwanted that they should “go back where they came from”—is nothing less than a declaration of war on our very democracy. True, this attack was racist, painting the women as outsiders because they are not white. Yes, his defenders […]

It’s a good bet that Donald Trump doesn’t know Nicola Sturgeon, but it would do him a world of good to study her example. On the day he defied mourners by visiting Pittsburgh, the first minister of Scotland, his counterpart, was leading students on a tour of Auschwitz to show them first-hand “what can happen […]

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Hierarchies? –Rainer Maria Rilke Now Trump’s love of insult and violence has given us this: the massacre of Jews in their synagogue. It was bound to happen. Eventually, inevitably, in this atmosphere created by his demagogic politics. It is not the Holocaust, not even […]

Hello, readers of Starr In Dissent — I’m the guest blogger today (thanks, hubby!), with a piece that I finished earlier this week and one that was written in great fury and sadness. All comments are welcome. Thanks, Jan By Jan B. Warrington A question for Susan Collins: How will you treat your friends who’ve […]

In the week when Senator John McCain was being praised everywhere but the White House for a lifetime of principle and honor, the president of the United States was talking of violence against Democrats and journalists. On Monday he told evangelists in Washington that if Republicans lost the mid-term election, Democrats “will overturn everything that […]

The Trump administration has begun revoking the citizenship of Americans born in the United States, even confiscating U.S. passports at the border, according to tonight’s report in The Washington Post. These include Americans not only born here but who served in the U.S. armed forces, who are Hispanic and were delivered years ago by midwives. […]

Today President Trump put his country into the orbit of Russia’s allies. As long as he is president, the United States is no longer an independent nation but a Russian satellite willing to do its bidding like the Soviet satellites of fifty years ago. And the longer he remains president and continues to damage the […]