Where Trump’s Acquittal Fits Into the History of Impeachment, According to Historians
February 6, 2020
Although we can’t predict the future, we know with certainty the date that something’s going to happen that tells us how we’re going to interpret what just happened. If Trump is re-elected, future historians will say it was a mistake [for the Democrats] to do the impeachment. If Trump is defeated, future historians will say it was a good idea to do the impeachment…
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The key to understanding President Trump’s impeachment trial
January 21, 2020
At long last, senators stand ready to determine President Trump’s fate. Just don’t call them jurors. Neither are they his judges, though their judgment is required. The peculiar vocabulary of presidential impeachment trials does not end there…
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We were lucky to survive the Berlin Wall’s fall
November 9, 2019
Thirty years ago this week the impossible happened: the Berlin Wall fell. More accurately it was crushed by Berliners both East and West who’d had enough of the scar across their cityscape. Like crowds before them, in Leipzig and Dresden in East Germany, in Budapest and Warsaw too, demonstrators demanding change stared down soldiers and police, and won…
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Lest we forget: The lesson of D-Day for Americans today
June 5, 2019
“Lest we forget.” Expect to hear those words often as we mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day this week. More than half a million Allied airmen, soldiers and sailors invaded France that cold and blustery morning. More than 4,000 would be dead by day’s end. So, too, a thousand German soldiers and an estimated 3,000 French civilians. It was carnage…
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Impeachment should be a no-brainer, no matter what the Mueller report says
April 15, 2019
The Constitution’s authors wouldn’t have needed any summary of the special counsel’s report to know it was time to impeach the president. Neither would they have waited to see whether its full text provided evidence of criminal wrongdoing…
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The last of the non-chicken hawks: What George H.W. Bush learned about war by serving in combat
April 29, 2018
Not every commander in chief saw combat. George Washington did. Andrew Jackson did. Harry Truman first tasted leadership in World War I’s trenches, while John Kennedy’s back never quite recovered from the moment a Japanese destroyer shattered his PT boat…
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Trump should try quiet diplomacy. It’s how Bush 41 avoided real war after the Cold War
November 7, 2017
Twenty-five years ago this week, Americans rejected a far different man than the one in power today. Self-confident where Donald Trump is thin-skinned, well-mannered in a way Trump considers weak, George H.W. Bush is remembered a quarter-century out of office as an elder statesman whose call for a “kinder and gentler” nation appears quaint in retrospect…
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Putin wants to make Russia great again, too
October 5, 2017
Vladimir Putin wants what each of his predecessors wanted: to make Russia great. Key to understanding his fascination with power alongside his seemingly bottomless distrust of the United States is the addition of one more word that should ring familiar: He wants to make Russia great – again…
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