Israel’s military action against Hamas is now in its sixth month. While numerical measures of its consequences are in constant dispute,[1] at least 100 people remain hostages of Hamas, some of them almost certainly undeclared dead, and Israel's response has claimed over 33,000 civilian casualties and caused untold billions in damage to homes, buildings, and … Continue reading Israel in the Present Tense

My fellow Republicans: I stand before you as a distant runner-up in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. I’m here to concede those losses to Donald Trump, but also to take a step back and refocus on what we’re in the process of doing as a political party, and as a country: we’re in the … Continue reading The Concession Speech Nikki Haley Should Give

Barring an intervention of fate or an uncharacteristic spasm of political sanity, the 2024 presidential election will likely be a rematch of Trump v. Biden. Many of us greet this prospect with renewed dread, like having one’s house and family survive a Category 4 hurricane only to be told that there’s a Cat 5 coming … Continue reading The Coming Cat 5 Presidential Election

As any observant American is all too aware, hypocrisy is the very air in which our national discourse transpires. But sometimes that hypocrisy reaches levels that simply take your breath away. In my home state of Ohio, a truly breathtaking exercise in political cynicism is unfolding. This November, the voting citizens of the state will … Continue reading How (Not) to Amend a Constitution

We’re approaching the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade and nullified what had been, for over 50 years, a woman’s constitutional right to abort her pregnancy in the first trimester. Since then, Republican-dominated state legislatures across the country have been busily criminalizing … Continue reading The Pro-Life/Pro-Gun Paradox

National media attention has moved well beyond the disaster called Hurricane Ian. But as a seasonal resident of Sanibel, the 19 mile-long barrier island on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I want to offer this personal, impressionistic, unscientific, apolitical assessment of the island’s recovery six months after Ian, and begin to contemplate how its future … Continue reading Sanibel Island, Six Months After Hurricane Ian

by Laura Sommers  Monday night, in a late-season game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals, Damar Hamlin took a hit on a tackle, shook himself, stood up, and collapsed. Cardiac arrest, we found out about 12 hours later. The game was suspended, and so was football. All the stupefied reporters and squirmy official … Continue reading Guest Post: Damar Hamlin and Just Not Knowing

Imagine a cocktail party. You arrive to find two rooms full of people. One room, call it Room A, is full of white, heterosexual people in a narrow age range, all similarly dressed for a cocktail party and all speaking English. The second room, Room B, is populated with a mix of whites (say, 30%), … Continue reading The View from Room B: College, Diversity, and the End of Affirmative Action

As the shock visited upon those of us with friends, loved ones, and homes in southwest Florida begins to recede with the floodwaters, what’s left in the wake of Hurricane Ian? What quickly emerges is a kind of competence and seriousness in governing that seemed to have been permanently lost amidst all the political posturing … Continue reading Governing and Citizenship in a Time of Disaster: the Lessons of Sanibel Island

Politics, once a kind of sport for we amateur observers, is just no fun anymore. We’re in the third year of a deadly pandemic, on the cusp of a recession, and we’ve lived through one of the strangest, least civil, most divisive election cycles in memory, culminating in the horrific disruption at the Capitol. We’ve … Continue reading Looking Forward, Watching Out