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What Cheney deserves from Biden

When she was a member of Congress, former Representative Liz Cheney took positions on many issues that I abhorred. I suspect you did, too. But on the transcendent issue of American democracy and Trump’s culpability in trying to destroy it, she’s been a rare voice of clarity and courage — and continues to be. Yesterday, Cheney called out Trump’s threat, which he made on “Meet the Press,” to imprison her and other members of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. She said Trump’s threat was an “assault on the rule of law ...

Resurgence in the heart of the rebellion

The making of whiskey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, has often been fraught with a fair amount of drama. Whether it was those trying to make it or those trying to drink it, the government has sought to tax and sometimes even ban both activities. Two hundred thirty years ago, William Findley, a Revolutionary War hero, farmer and statesman, drew the wrath of Alexander Hamilton over the severe measures the Treasury Department placed on Pennsylvania farmers who opposed the newly enacted federal whiskey excise tax. Findley, who lived in Latrobe, petitioned the new government to repeal the 1791 ...

Pardoning the unpardonable

Media reports say President Biden is about to issue a slew of blanket pre-emptive pardons for people associated with his administration to thwart any “revenge” the incoming Trump administration might take against them. While the Founders intended presidential power to be nearly unlimited (there is an exception for a president who has been impeached), their intent was quite different from its use by modern presidents. Colleen Shogan of the Rubenstein Center has written: “While the pardon power is robust, there are ... important limitations,” among them is that “a crime must ...

Anger against insurers comes honestly

There is no condoning the cold-blooded murder of a UnitedHealth Group executive in predawn Manhattan. Moments after Brian Thompson was shot dead, a torrent of unsympathetic posts flooded social media. I was surprised by both the brazen attack and the unveiled congratulations to a killer. The reasons for the anger, however, I understood very well. I have my own story. I shared it after the insurer had launched its cruel “Delay Deny Defend” strategy to avoid covering my husband’s cancer treatment. Those three words became the title of a 2010 book on the subject, written by Rutgers ...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is 1-man plague

At a New York rally in October, Donald Trump promised the crowd that if elected, he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health, food and medicines. It delighted the crowd, who imagined they were cheering for better health and better medicine. They’re in for a bitter surprise. Some who should know better are offering cautious approval. Well, he has a point about fluoride in the water, a Washington Post columnist conceded. American health care has “become too reliant on treating every matter of discomfort with a pill instead of tackling questions about environment, ...

Everyone pays for Palestinian catastrophes

The word that Palestinians use for the 1948 displacement of many of their forebears is “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe.” That displacement, of course, was a self-inflicted catastrophe, but also one that Arab leaders inflicted on the rest of the world, which has paid a heavy price for it. It was the proximate result of the decision by Arab nations to reject a United Nations partition of disputed land into a Jewish state and another Arab one, a decision to invade the nascent state of Israel in order to wipe it out. Improbably, this invasion failed, and in the process several ...