When did the CIA—an agency that makes the DMV look like a model of efficiency—lose its reputation for secrecy and stop its agents from selling state secrets? When did it cease to leak data—and prevent work-related deaths—so its headquarters would not become the Deepwater Horizon of the federal government? How did an agency too big

I prefer a scalpel over a guillotine. I prefer precision over gore, and would take an editorial guillotine to any laws written by Al or Tipper Gore, which is a separate matter altogether, as one is as cold as ice while the other is a scold who sought to put freedom of expression on ice,

Perhaps John F. Kennedy was right when, in the course of his commencement address at Yale, he said he now had the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree. It would be a better world if the majority of Kennedy’s successors, including President Trump, had nominated Supreme Court justices who were

Show me an honest politician, and I will show you a politician of infinite integrity and zero responsibility. Tell me Donald Trump is the biggest liar in American history, and I will soon know if you are an ignoramus or a liar, because deception is both a presidential prerogative and an exercise in effective leadership.

America has its Founding Fathers—and I have my mother and father. Like their republican forbearers, like the men my fellow citizens revere, like the words and deeds of Paul Revere, my parents are ready to sound the alarm and answer the call of duty: to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Should

Liberty is a bold yet brief ideal, not unlike the fireworks that brighten the nighttime sky: colors that become scribblings of smoke and streamers that fade to black, until the party ends and the music stops. If liberty itself ceases—if it is more of a façade than a fact of life—we have nothing to celebrate

One of two things explains the New York Times’ belated (by 15 hours) online obituary of the author Harlan Ellison, which I first saw on Facebook by way of a post from Variety. Either the Times’ servers achieved consciousness and organized a metaphorical walkout against management, a news item suppressed by the paper since the

Ask me to name the two worst inventions of the late 20th century, whose existence continues to threaten the lives of free and enslaved peoples alike, from Americans to Russians to Indians and Pakistanis to Israelis and Iranians, and I will cite neither the proliferation of nuclear weapons nor the popularization of the internal combustion

Ever wonder what a disgruntled, former Disney Imagineer does when his severance ends and his half-finished sexbot lies in a trash can outside The Hall of Presidents? Me neither. If, however, you find an animatronic George Washington—sans dentures—and a beardless Abraham Lincoln, call Jonathan Nolan, the co-creator of HBO’s “Westworld.” Ask him to wax philosophical,

Our supposedly moral betters pollute the high road of reconciliation with the low rhetoric of revenge. They emit a sulphuric blend of rottenness, as noxious in its use of name-calling as it is negligent in its reliance on naming names; on renaming the president a fascist and his aides the agents of Nazi barbarism; on