Former President Jimmy Carter lying in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 7. *Photograph by Aaron Troutman/U.S. Army.*

A second Trump presidency -- the Jimmy Carter antithesis

January 12, 2025

Former President Jimmy Carter was buried on the day (Thursday, Jan. 9) that the United States Supreme Court refused to stay President-elect Donald J. Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money conviction.

Let that sink in. Here was on the one hand a humanitarian and on the other a man whose compassion for the Los Angeles wildfires was crystallized by his calling rival Gov. Gavin Newsom “Newscum.”

And yet, there are plenty of Americans who think Carter, though a great humanitarian, was a poor president, and many Americans who can’t wait to see Trump back in power on Monday, Jan. 20, which is coincidentally Martin Luther King Jr. Day as well as Inauguration Day.

Andy Murray surving at the 2015 Australian Open. *Photograph by Brendan Dennis.*

Mitch McConnell, Andy Murray and the art of letting go

March 2, 2024

News that tennis star Andy Murray plans to retire this summer after the Paris Olympics and that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to become a backbencher has brought me back to a very bad summer day two years ago and thoughts of what it really means to let go of a a career — and your ego.

Lucas Cranach the Elder’s “Lady Justice” (1537), oil on panel. Collection of Fridart Stichting, a foundation in Amsterdam.

The end of Roe and of an era

June 26, 2022

It’s hard to know where to begin with the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade. The repercussions are that great.

For women who seek abortions, the 6-3 decision marks an eventual return to coat-hanger, knitting-needle days. If the pro-life crowd — which is generally pro-guns and pro-death penalty — thinks it has seen death, it’s hasn’t seen anything yet. Women have always sought abortions and will continue to do so, now less safely. But now death will come in other ways, too.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Susanna and the Elders” (circa 1610), oil on canvas, Schönborn Collection, Pommersfelden, Germany. Gentileschi was raped by her artist father Orazio’s assistant, Agostino Tassi, who had been engaged to give her art leassons, then tortured to make sure she was telling the truth. She played out her survival in paintings in which biblical heroines triumphed over male assault. Whenever I think of men trying to control women, I think of works like this one.

Pro life and its culture of death

May 7, 2022

Just in time for Mother’s Day, the United States Supreme Court has a gift that is “sure” to warm the hearts of moms and would-be moms everywhere — a leaked draft decision that would appear to repeal Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal in America. Chief Justice John Roberts — whose position as a swing vote on the court appears to have been nullified by the arrival of conservative Amy “the Handmaiden” Coney Barrett and whose legacy is in jeopardy — was shocked, shocked I tell you, that someone leaked the draft and has vowed an investigation. But the leak is hardly the point, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Bruce MacKinnon’s cartoon appeared in The Chronicle Herald Sept. 29.

Where do we go from here?

October 7, 2018

So Brett Kavanaugh becomes a United States Supreme Court Justice and that’s too bad, because he lacks the temperament for it, as he himself demonstrated, and because other revelations – an inability to confront a drunken youth, questionable credit card charges and a good deal of misremembering – would seem to indicate an injudiciousness that would be lethal for a judge….

The rules of engagement: Trump rejoins the world America never left

April 10, 2017

President Donald J. Trump’s decision to respond to the chemical weapons attack in Syria with a bombardment of 59 Tomahawk missiles was the most presidential thing he has done so far. He’s not the first president to use an air strike as a form of gesture politics and, sadly, he won’t be the last.

But it had to be done. It’s what a President Hillary Clinton would’ve done. It’s what President Barack Obama should’ve done. What does it accomplish? Maybe nothing. But you cannot let chemical weapons go unnoticed. This year marks the centennial of the United States’ entry into World War I, the Great War, in which millions were gassed. The response was “Never again.” And yet it has happened, again and again. ...

The Supreme Court and the executioner’s song

July 2, 2015

The Supreme Court has upheld a drug used in Oklahoma executions, dismissing the claim of three death-row inmates that it causes excruciating pain.

Basically, the majority of the Supremes said the inmates should’ve come up with an alternative drug – which Justice Sonia Sotomayor thought was nutty.

“Petitioners contend that Oklahoma’s current protocol is a barbarous method of punishment — the chemical equivalent of being burned alive,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. ...