Ideas
Arguments. Essays. Inquiries.
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Amr Alfiky / Reuters To Drain the Swamp, Start With Rudy Giuliani
MAGA nation should be outraged about President Trump’s personal attorney.
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Gregory Reed / rafapress / Shutterstock / The ... Just Break the NDA, Pete
The worst that could happen is actually a best-case scenario.
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New Jobs, New Residents, and New Possibilities
Here are news items and developments related to trends we’ve been covering in the recent “Our Towns” series,…
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Win McNamee / Reuters Losing the Rare in ‘Safe, Legal, and Rare’
Coined by Bill Clinton, the phrase was an inspired way to bring together a range of abortion supporters under a now-abandoned umbrella.
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Library of Congress / AP The President Can Do Whatever He Wants, Which Is Why He Can’t
The Founders gave the executive branch immense authority—but also counted on the people to hold their leaders in check.
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Ann Ronan Pictures / Print Collector / Getty The Most Dangerous Form of Bribery
Election corruption can’t be solved by corrupt elections, so the Founders devised a special solution: impeachment.
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Alexander Steam / Timofeev Vladimir / Dean Drobot ... The Self-Appointed Spies Who Use Google Earth to Sniff Out Nukes
Nuclear intelligence isn’t just for government agencies anymore. A motley crew of outside watchdogs has found creative ways to deter proliferation.
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An Artist-in-Residence Creates a Sense of Place
We’ve seen artist-in-residence programs in a number of the towns we’ve visited. The first was in Eastport Maine, where we ran into Richelle Gribble, a young artist from California, whom I consider a resident-artist extraordinaire. Over the past three and a half years, Richelle (as I’ll refer to her) has been an artist-in-residence in 15 different programs around the world, from a biosphere in Arizona to a ranch in Wyoming to the Arctic Circle in Norway.
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Tom Brenner / Reuters Trump’s Supporters Are Displaying the Will to Win. Democrats Are Not.
The House Judiciary Committee needs a clearer plan for mobilizing public opinion in support of impeachment.
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Jacquelyn Martin / AP The Legal Debate About Impeachment Is Over
The expert witness called by Republicans agreed that the quid pro quo—if proved—would be an impeachable act.
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Nathan Troester The Moral Universe of Timothy Keller
A conversation with the evangelical pastor and theologian
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Pool / Reuters Who’s Really to Blame for the ‘Ukraine Did It’ Conspiracy Theory?
Judging on the basis of public evidence, the narrative about Ukraine was propagated first and foremost by Americans, not Russian disinformation puppeteers.
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John Locher / AP Progressives Have Short Memories
The Democrats’ leftward lurch doomed Kamala Harris, an ex-prosecutor—and ignores the political pressures that black and female candidates faced not long ago.
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Tom Brenner / Reuters All the President’s Crooks
Again and again, Trump’s core supporters have turned out to be criminals.
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Win McNamee / Getty The Obscure—But Crucial—Rules the Trump Administration Has Sought to Corrupt
I was part of a team that carefully developed a rule-making process in compliance with both the Constitution and Congress’s laws. Can the same be said now?
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E. R. Curtiss / Wisconsin Historical Society / ... How to Revive Madison’s Constitution
The American experiment requires virtuous leaders who place the public good over their own personal or partisan interests.
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Stephen Hird / Reuters Why White-Collar Workers Spend All Day at the Office
Why Americans work more than anyone else.
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Ludovic Marin / Reuters Trump Violates Diplomacy’s Golden Rule
At the NATO summit, the president publicly heaped abuse on America’s closest friends.
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Joshua Roberts / Reuters The Weaponization of Impeachment
America’s political leaders like to talk a big game about proper constitutional conduct and high-minded principles, but the history of impeachment reveals that partisanship is a more powerful motivator.
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Report for America Goes Big
This week there is genuinely positive news about one of the experiments I wrote about this past summer: the Report for America initiative, which sends experienced-but-still-rising reporters and editors to news outlets across the country, especially in small towns and rural areas hardest-hit by the pressures on local news.
