A small cheer for, of all people, Senator Rand Paul because despite numerous rambling lunacies in his 13-hour filibuster on drones and the killing of Americans—which gave aid and comfort to antigovernment survivalist militias—he raised a crucial constitutional issue that all but the most liberal Democrats are ducking. Furthermore, he did so using the original filibuster rule by standing and orating, not just saying “I filibuster” and ambling off to the golf course like his colleagues.
 

 
Like it or not, drone warfare is here to stay as both an intelligence tool …

The primary election for Jesse Jackson Jr.’s congressional seat—tantamount to winning the general—has attracted national attention on several counts, some of which are misleading.
As we know, former three-term State Rep. Robin Kelly, running in a field of 16, beat former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, the only white in the race, by a surprising 55-25 percent. Only Alderman Anthony Beale of Chicago’s 9th ward scored double digits.

The race was notable primarily because it centered on gun violence and the National Rifle Association, and because a super-PAC financed by …

Civilization, or what passes for it these days, has been trying to define or set rules of war—what’s fair, what’s foul—since biblical times. The Old Testament and later Islamic law recognized that horrific as war may be, it could be made less so around the edges by setting down certain humanitarian practices to be followed in the treatment of human beings and their environment.

Around the time of our own Civil War, in 1864, more than a dozen European nations and empires gathered in Geneva to codify wartime behavior regarding …

So Jesse Jackson Jr. may do up to five years for purloining $750,000 in campaign funds for personal items ranging from a $45,000 Rolex to furs to celebrity collectibles—while his wife Sandi pleads guilty to income tax evasion. Thus ends the sad saga of one of the most promising political careers of this century—and a bitter personal disappointment for people such as myself who were friends and supporters.

Before deducing his likely successor, I must note what I see as the personal, perhaps mental, deterioration of a young man …

The journalist Peter Beinart, author of “The Crisis of Zionism”, has written extensively about the disconnect between the powerful, old-line Jewish organizations and a younger generation of American Jews who do not show the same level of support for Israel the elders require.

The elders want uncritical hundred percent support or you risk becoming a “self-hating Jew.” Similarly, criticism of Israeli policies and actions voiced by a non-Jew makes that person an anti-Semite.
Beinart has felt the elders’ sting through …

Of the two big items on Barack Obama’s current agenda—gun safety and immigration reform—I suspect he’ll get more done on the latter than the former.
No surprise.
The gun lobby still holds sway on large numbers of both parties in both houses, while wise Republicans recognize they have a vested interest in making nice to the larger Latino community in the hopes of picking up enough political support to avoid oblivion in presidential elections to come.

Yet there’s …

It’s just another congressional vacancy but circumstances give Illinois’s Second District special interest. Since 1995 it belonged to the son of the nation’s best-known civil rights figure, who soon developed a broader, progressive crossover following than the father.
Then Jesse Jackson Jr. got caught in an ethics issue because of his effort to be named to Barack Obama’s senate seat. He strangely disappeared then surfaced belatedly as a patient of bipolar disorder. He did no campaigning last November but won overwhelmingly. The wheels came off when the …

Last week I was sort of congratulating the president for calling an early halt to the Afghan war, but the thought nags that we could easily get into any of three others.

Events in Mali kicked off my fears. Islamist insurgents took over a part of the country and were on their way to more. Suddenly, in stepped the French, first with airpower then “boots on the ground.”
Turned out to be a tougher fight than expected. The insurgents are well armed and …

Barack Obama was elected president primarily because of his stated opposition to the Iraq War, defeating Hillary Clinton who not only voted for the war but refused to apologize for the vote, as had Joe Biden and the other senators in that 2008 primary election.
Obama famously announced he was not opposed to all wars, just dumb wars. Meaning it would be dumb to go into Iraq, but Afghanistan was, well, maybe not smart, but acceptable. Much of America agreed with the assessment.

…

I used to think I understood Republicans even though we disagreed on most big issues. Actually, I have voted for several and even helped elect a few in Cook County—plus a non-felonious Illinois governor and a U.S. senator in my murky past.
I understood conservatives such as Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley and certainly the late Tom Roeser, a founder of the Chicago Daily Observer, who hired me to be the alternative left-progressive voice on this conservative-oriented website.

These days, however, I …