As usual in American politics, everyone’s talking the Hegseth and the Houthis story to death, but almost no one’s focused on the right part of it. The story, of course, is that Hegseth and Co had planned to bomb Yemen, and did. They discussed their war plans on the Signal app, but accidentally put Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, on the chat. That was a gigantic breach of protocol, but Hegseth et al didn’t notice Goldberg’s presence. A big national controversy has now arisen about what to do. Investigate Hegseth? Force him to resign? Prosecute him? Continue reading
Category Archives: Trump 2
In Your Darkness, We Shall See the Darkness
Columbia’s Capitulation
In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen
–“In Your Light, We Shall See the Light,” Columbia University’s motto
Of all the pathetic abdications of moral responsibility and expressions of cowardice I managed to see during the quarter century I spent in academia, few approximate Columbia University’s abject surrender to the Trump Administration the other day. I won’t bother belaboring the details, which you can read almost anywhere. As former Columbia law professor Katherine Franke aptly put it, this is a case in which the victim of a ransom note has not just capitulated to the demands of the ransomers but given them what they hadn’t asked for, in return for less than nothing. But if you stand back from the welter of detail, there are a few lessons here worth learning, and worth articulating. Continue reading
In Defense of Mahmoud Khalil
Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana March 18, 2025
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law. Continue reading
No More Tears
The Selena Gomez controversy may not be your idea of a top story right now, but I think it has a certain interest to it. As you may know, Gomez took to social media to post a video of herself sobbing about the recent ICE deportations. No sooner did she do so, but she was assailed for it. She tried to explain herself, only to invite further derision, then ended up deleting both the original post and one of her later explanations.
Of particular interest to me is this riposte to Gomez from Thomas Homan, acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, and now the White House “border czar.”
We’ve got a quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl coming across an open border. Where’s the tears for them?
The border isn’t “open,” and the “quarter of a million” figure is phony. But I have a pretty direct answer to Homan’s question, and have special standing to answer it: If you want tears, look elsewhere. Continue reading
Learn the Language
A friend of mine was unceremoniously fired from Felician University in 2023–one of sixteen people fired on a single day–after 23 unrelenting years as an English comp instructor to students with an average SAT verbal score well below 500. I described her in a letter of recommendation, without exaggeration, as “the most dedicated college instructor I had ever encountered” in two+ decades in the profession. Her office was across the hall from mine, and every now and then I’d eavesdrop on her efforts. I couldn’t imagine putting even half the effort into teaching that she did. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 