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A lesson for all Americans from ‘The Crown’

There is a telling scene in Season 3 of the Netflix drama “The Crown” about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II that can instruct contemporary America about Democrats’ attempt to impeach President Trump. The episode is titled “Coup.” Harold Wilson is prime minister of Britain. He has just devalued the British pound and a bad economy has provoked street demonstrators to call for his removal from office. A cabal ensues, led by Cecil King, the editor of the otherwise pro-Labour Party newspaper, the Daily Mirror. The plotters select Lord Mountbatten as the one they wish to ...

Political courage is contagious

During his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 13, Ambassador William Taylor described our diplomatic relations with Ukraine in terms of two channels. The first emanates from the Department of State and is managed by diplomats and staffers under the oversight of the ambassador and secretary of state. The second, as described by Taylor, Russia expert Fiona Hill, Ambassador Gordon Sondland and other witnesses, was a “highly irregular” channel operated by an ad hoc team comprised of Ambassadors Sondland and Kurt Volker and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, all ...

‘This is America. …And here, right matters’

In her diary entry for July 15, 1944, Anne Frank wrote words that would harrow and challenge generations not yet born: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” Less than a month later, “people” would discover Anne and seven other Jews hiding in a secret room. “People” would pack her in a crowded cattle car with only a barrel for a toilet and send her on a three-day journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The following February at Bergen-Belsen, “people” would watch her die of typhus. She was 15 years old. All of which makes her words ...

What is ‘unfettered capitalism’?

Enemies of unfettered capitalism, unite! For as long as I can remember, people on the left have complained about “unfettered capitalism.” Moderate liberals do it, and of course flat-out Marxists do it. In his new book, “A Bit of Everything: Power, People, Profits and Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz contends that the only way we’ll be able to confront climate change is through a new social contract. “Capitalism will be part of the story, but it can’t be the kind of capitalism that we’ve had for the last 40 ...

D’s, R’s teamed for Sesame Street

By Newton N. Minow Chicago Tribune (TNS) The opening days of the House impeachment inquiry deepened the sharp political divisions that make our country more polarized than we once could have imagined. We seem unable to find common ground on even the most fundamental issues of law and evidence. On those same days, I saw commemorations of the 50th anniversary of “Sesame Street” and began to reflect about an unbelievable series of coincidences that led a bipartisan group to make the show possible. I got to see it happen from a front-row seat. Just before Christmas in 1968, Dean Burch ...

Communities across US face water crisis

CRESCO, Iowa – If you come to this rural Iowa town, you’ll learn about a problem that may sound familiar. In The New York Times, for instance, you’ve learned that many residents in Newark, N.J., have gone nearly two years without being able to turn on the faucets in their homes to take a drink of water, cook or even brush their teeth. The culprit: lead-coated pipes that have been seeping their poisons into the homes and schools in a scattering of neighborhoods. The problem was first ignored and denied. City officials declared the water safe and then took months to admit their ...