Corruption is a bad thing wherever you find it, and no profession or institution, from churches on Main Street to banks on Wall Street, is immune. You've got people who abuse the trust of shareholders and people who abuse the trust of voters; you've got cops who abuse their badges and professors who abuse their tenure. But in my book there is a special place by the devil's side for corrupt prosecutors.
He might be nervous and insecure. After all, he's got the biggest, hardest job in the world. It's not like he's been preparing for it all his life; nine years ago he was commuting between Chicago and Springfield, Ill. It's not like he inherited peace and prosperity; he inherited recession, misery and war. It's not like there are any easy victories; getting us out of the various messes we find ourselves in will, at best, be a long, painful and uneven journey.
What's Bill O'Reilly doing at a benefit for rape victims and their families?
Nothing gets people's attention faster than picketing them at home -- which is not necessarily a reason to do it.
Imagine how different things might be right now if there were a Republican Party. I mean a party like the one led by Ronald Reagan, George Bush or Newt Gingrich; a party with a program, a single set of talking points, and the technological and communications advantages to get their message across. That kind of Republican Party. The kind that doesn't exist right now.
He was positively infuriating. I e-mailed his then-girlfriend, as the crowd was applauding him at Madison Square Garden in 2004, that I hoped she wasn't dating the (expletive deleted) anymore. She was.
Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in federal district court in New York to all 11 counts against him, waiving his right to an indictment, avoiding the humiliation of a trial, and depriving his victims and the public of what might have been a public course in how Ponzi schemes work, and how even sophisticated investors can be played for dupes.
It has a way of sneaking up on me, like the unhappy anniversary it is. Who knew?
In an ideal world, gay marriage would be won at the ballot box. Voters would recognize that they have absolutely nothing to lose by allowing their fellow citizens the same rights to marry that heterosexual men and women now enjoy. Even many prominent conservatives (say, Sarah Palin) have come to recognize that it is wrong, heartless even, to deny gay couples the right to sign up for health benefits or to make critical medical decisions for their partners.
He talks for hours every day. He gets paid to talk. Just talk. Doing it well is no small thing; witness the number of people who have tried to be him, or be the NOT-him, and failed. But he doesn't have to build a coalition.
One of my favorite federal judges used to laugh whenever I began a sentence "with all due respect," because he knew I was about to tell him I thought he was wrong.
The president deserves the high marks he is getting from the public for his first month in office. Most presidents get to spend their first month putting up the draperies.
The purpose of being a columnist is not to win friends. It is not to provoke silent nods of agreement. The goal is to strike a chord, hit a nerve -- which is to say, at least sometimes, make people mad. Controversy is good, not bad.
Why would someone risk his life by, as the LA Times described, "extending his body away from a motorcycle and grabbing the seat as the motorcycle is upside down, then pulling back aboard as the motorcycle is righted before landing"? Or not. In which case, as it was with 24-year-old Jeremy Lusk, he ends up dead.
The patient is in trouble. That much we know. About that everyone is certain. There are mounting job losses, record deficits, banks failing, mortgages underwater, layoffs looming.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is small in stature, but she has very big shoulders. Alongside a generation of women lawyers, I stand on them, with gratitude and pride. The news that the only woman on the United States Supreme Court has been hospitalized for surgery for pancreatic cancer brings an opportune moment to say thank you.
It was not a good day for ethics in government.
This is the Republicans' big contribution to our economic recovery: They want to make sure that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes using tax identification numbers don't get a cent of their tax money back in the refunds enacted by Congress. Oh, yes, and they want rich people to get tax refunds.
On Jan. 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers entered the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland and liberated the 7,000 prisoners who were still there, most of them sick and dying.
