On a sunny Tuesday morning 25 years ago, Congress reconvened. Speaker Dennis Hastert called the House of Representatives to order, and the Illinois Republican recognized Rep. Earl Blumenauer. The bowtie-wearing Democrat from Oregon began delivering a speech criticizing the marketing of tobacco. He was the first of three members queued to give speeches. Only a […]

Attorney General Todd Blanche is stepping outside the traditional norms of the Justice Department to become a top political attack dog for Republicans in the homestretch before the midterm elections.  Blanche, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, replaced Pam Bondi as acting attorney general in April of this past year after serving as her deputy […]

It’s “Australia Summer” on the streaming services — or perhaps I should say “Australia Antipodal Winter,” for those of us who still believe, in this divisive age, in a round Earth.  Panned several weeks ago in this space, Netflix’s My Brilliant Career turned a daring Aussie novel into a calculated feminist trudge, the better to […]

If American sports media were to have a Mount Rushmore — if we were to select four figures whose voices and presences became inseparable from the games they covered — I don’t think there’d be much doubt that for the NFL, we’d choose John Madden; for the MLB, it would be Vin Scully; and for the NBA, […]