With his famed utterance that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan had to have known, on some level, that he was offering a cliche destined to last the ages. But the truth, like history, and so many other things these days, just ain’t what it used to be... more

Chaos theory has been called the study of predicting “inherently unpredictable” systems. It is also an apt description of the study of the Trump presidency. Those closest to the president say he thrives on chaos, relishes tumult, and takes perverse pleasure in stirring up conflict among advisers and associates. The president is energized by noise. While this style of management may have served him as a businessman, it has limited his ability to lead and govern effectively... more

Since the advent of sabermetrics, the already insufferable annual argument about who should get into the dysfunctional Baseball Hall of Fame has become more tedious. Sabermetricians, who have significant influence within major league baseball and on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, constantly advocate for very good but not great players’ induction. ... more

It’s been quite a year, the exact reverse of that whole “time flies when you’re having fun” thing. These last twelve months have slogged by like cold molasses riddled with bat guano dripping through a tightly woven bamboo sieve. It seems like decades since Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Shouldn’t he be termed out by now?... more

They’ll do it every time. Whenever Joe Sixpack (or Joe’s congressman) gingerly raises the subject of hiring extra border guards, tweaking our broken system of monitoring work visas or fine-tuning our vetting of refugees from terrorist-infested countries, the cliché knee-jerk responses are swift... more

We all know how the government shutdowns usually go. Democrats demand something unreasonable. Republicans awkwardly try to push their agenda forward. The left-wing media act as the PR firm for the Democrats. The Republicans get blamed. The government shutdown is over. Not this time... more

When it came to a recent column about President Donald Trump’s preference for “executive time” that includes a healthy dose of cable news viewing and unhinged Tweeting, the reader wasn’t in the mood to hold back. “This article was just a pack of lies,” wrote a reader of the Mansfield News Journal in Mansfield, Ohio, where my column occasionally runs. ... more

I’m on a diet - a miserable diet - just as millions of Americans are during January every year. And to be successful, I want the federal government to intervene. We’re fighting an obesity battle in America, after all. Our capitalistic system has accomplished economic miracles across every area of our lives. However, regrettably, capitalistic efficiency has also produced an abundance of low-fiber, high-calorie, refined-sugar foods - which our bodies convert into instant chubbiness... more

Nobody is more stunned about the stratospheric sales of “Fire and Fury” than the guy who wrote it. Michael Wolff and I were talking backstage prior to his gig on Tuesday night at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and he confessed that he never saw it coming. He was convinced that he’d gotten the inside skinny about Trump’s den of dysfunction, but in our info-saturated ecosystem, with Trump under scrutiny 24/7, who could have envisioned 11 printings within 12 days of release?... more

Because we live in such tumultuous political times, it’s easy to believe that today’s intense public focus on the Trump presidency is something new — an obsession like none we’ve ever seen before. Yet to one degree or another, the president has always been at the center of the public’s attention... more

We’ve had some time to digest the furor over President Trump’s alleged comments about certain countries as “sh*%holes.” Now it’s time to learn from the experience. First, the president denies using that particular term. That may make this whole discussion moot if it were ever possible to prove it either way. ... more

Thirty-plus years ago, aunt Addie Lee dropped in on the farmhouse that my parents used for storage and family cookouts. She quaffed a glass of sparkling tap water and waxed eloquent about how our good ol’ spring water put to shame the over-processed H2O from the municipal water works... more

We are, as we go through life, constantly experiencing opposites. Old/Young, Good/Bad, Sharp/Dull Happy/Sad. It touches not only our individual lives but also our shared lives, those with family and friends we hold so dear. We see the Sun rise and then we watch it settle into the horizon. ... more

Everyone knows something has to be done for America’s DACA kids. Everyone with a good heart or a working brain knows it’s not their fault their parents sneaked them into the country when they were kids under 16. It’s true that by law they are illegal immigrants... more

President Trump’s vulgar language and racist views regarding immigration obfuscate serious debate over a key policy about which many reasonable people disagree. The buzzword is “merit.” In a tweet, Trump declares: “I, as President, want people coming into our Country who are going to help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on MERIT. No more Lotteries! #AMERICA FIRST.”... more

Note to self: When it’s time to sit down and talk with my bosses about my next steps as an opinion editor and all-around-columnist guy, I must make sure to negotiate in plenty of “executive time.” That gem comes to us courtesy of one Donald John Trump, who we learned saunters into the office at 11 a.m most weekdays, all the better to squeeze in some time to be the Leader of the Free World... more

I’ve never bought this notion that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. To me, the story carries about as much weight as the Trump dossier. As we dig deeper into this bizarre story, we find the two are indubitably intertwined. The now-debunked dossier accuses Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev of hacking into the DNC computers. ... more

Am I excited about the upcoming (January 22) 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking NBC comedy-variety series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”? You bet your sweet bippy! Stars such as Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Lily Tomlin, Judy Carne, Goldie Hawn and Jo Anne Worley made “Laugh-In” America’s #1 show for two of its six seasons... more

Didn’t we turn over a new leaf in 2018? Didn’t everyone in Washington resolve to work together on America’s important problems and get things done? Oh, sorry. That must have been that pipe dream I had last weekend when I dozed off in my La-Z-Boy watching the Times Square ball fall on TV... more

Hey!!! Sorry. Just trying to rouse everyone from their tranquil basking in the afterglow of the most wonderful time of the year. You know, the one where the retail industry celebrates swimming in black ink while the rest of us pray the frigid temps delay the bills a mite longer... more