Out of Left Field

Independence Day is observed in the wrong month. Celebrating American independence on July 4 fails to appreciate that the document promulgated by Congress on that date was actually signed in …

Rahm Emanuel will never be president of the US. That was true even before his perfidious appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher in which he turned his back on a lifetime of support for Israel in the vain hope that he might somehow gain favor with the ascendant hate-fueled base of the Democratic party.

Wars are unpredictable. It’s part of what makes war so dangerous. Nothing goes exactly according to plan, especially in the absence of a plan. With strategic carelessness, outcomes of wars are reduced to games of chance, or opportunities for those who are prepared to take advantage of them. Every war exposes fools and foolishness in preparation, execution and aftermath. Wars also reward the cunning.

Last month, in an apparent oversight, the 92nd Street Y in New York did not invite me to deliver its State of World Jewry address. Instead, they went with Bret Stephens of The New York Times. Although he’s also a very good choice, I feel obliged to remedy the shortcomings in his presentation.

I’m right a lot. I know that can be frustrating for those who disagree with me and I feel for you, but such is life, as they say. Of all the columns I have written, the one that has elicited the most direct and consistently critical feedback was one in which I was as right as I have ever been. Sorry critics. Back in September I professed my Bo-lief. Cynics have chided me for months.

For the most part, we assume that a communal understanding of right and wrong will ensure that those social standards fit within a range of acceptable behaviors, guaranteeing the opportunity for all to survive and thrive as human beings. But what happens if that communal understanding begins to break down?

We need to move beyond governing by Tweet. It may be that the ability of the people of the US to evaluate public policy has been stunted by the lead-based paint of social media, but before we collapse into a full-blown idiocracy, we need to demand that elected leaders speak in complete sentences and paragraphs. “Going viral” is valuable if your primary goal is to garner attention by doing something moronic, but smart people need to remember that viruses are often dangerous and should take care before spreading them.

My home is not typically a social hub, as I am known to share my opinions as readily and as fiercely in private as I do in this space. The …

I believe with perfect faith that although he may tarry, the Denver Broncos quarterback will come. In fact, he is here. That’s right, I am a Bo-liever and I trust in Bo-ses to bring us to the Promised Land.

The Epstein Files. It is just so deliciously ironic that what most threatens Donald Trump’s standing with his base is a conspiracy theory that he would like to debunk. Trump’s political rise and endurance is built on a foundation of getting a large number of people to buy into nonsense. He was an Obama birther, accused Sen. Ted Cruz’s father of conspiring to assassinate JFK, depicted hordes of illegal immigrants swarming the country, inflated crowd sizes, downplayed Covid, stoked anti-Fauci and anti-vax sentiment, claimed fraud in the 2020 election, and fraud in 2024 until he won.

Zionism is a compromise. Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, is a Biblical, religious concept with variously defined boundaries. In Genesis 15:18, G-d’s covenant with Abraham included territory from the “River of Egypt to the great river Porat.” The “River of Egypt” is sometimes said to be the Nile and sometimes it is the Wadi el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, while the river Porat is the Euphrates. In Exodus 23:31, the borders are from the “Sea of Reeds” (Sinai Peninsula) to the “Sea of Philistia” (Mediterranean Sea) and from the “desert” (Negev) to “The River” (Euphrates). The State of Israel, in contrast, is substantially smaller. Why? Because Zionism is a compromise.

On my first night of the graduate tax program at DU, our assignment was to memorize a set of percentages used in the Internal Revenue Code for a variety of credits and tax benefits. On the second night, there was a roomful of befuddled accountants and lawyers who went hunting for categorical rules of thumb that would be easier to remember for the exam.