In my several visits to Germany, I have written in admiration of that country's strenuous efforts to face its past and make amends.
I don't like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.
There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.
We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.
In order to take a nation to war, you have to believe mightily in the threat you are facing and the virtue of your cause.
Polanski is a great film director - although the much-acclaimed 'Chinatown' has a muddled script - but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.
It's all right with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States - if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth.
Harvey Weinstein does not personify American liberalism any more than Bill O'Reilly personifies American conservatism.
Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in 'Casablanca.' Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman, and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age.
Republicans remain silent because Trump is doing what they want - lowering taxes on the rich, eviscerating regulations, bulldozing the environment, and insisting that a woman's body is not her own.
It is not true that Trump is nobody's fool. He is the GOP's.
How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a 'moron,' was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?
Trump's overriding accomplishment is plain: The Republican Party can no longer be shamed.
I am not a German bitter-ender. I am, though, a German never-forgetter.
Germany's crimes were recent and of such a scale and depravity that, unless constantly faced, they will come to seem fictitious.
Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times.
Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.
To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical.
The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.
Trump critics such as myself have been accused of living in a bubble. On the contrary, it is Trump's supporters in the 1 percent who breathed their own fumes.
Trump's presidency will fail. Just don't ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained.
Trump is a dust storm of lies and diversions with the bellows of a bully and the greasy ethics of a street-corner hustler.
Let me tell you, seven days without Wolf Blitzer is heaven. A week outside 'The Situation Room' is downright calming. No 'breaking news!' No hype. Blitzer is a first-class journalist, and I mention him only by way of acknowledging his fame.
Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?
There was a time when an ordinary American could close the door and keep the world at bay. Now the world comes elbowing in every time you go online.
We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old.
It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.
Fox News has been a force in converting the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump. The network's allegiance to Trump approaches mindless adoration.
George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian influence enhanced.
When I was a kid, I went door to door in my neighborhood asking for donations to the Jewish National Fund, best known then for its Israel forestation program. At the age of 11 or so, I imagined myself a regular Johnny Appleseed, responsible for vast forests.
As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.
If you told me back in my Army days that I could have bought the same weapon that I had been using in training, I would not have believed it.
The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.
What's the justification for a semiautomatic weapon with a magazine of 30 rounds?
Leaving aside handguns and hunting weapons, what's the justification for possessing an AR-15-style weapon?
With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump.
You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, 'The Post.'
I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.
It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.
What if Hillary Clinton were a man? What if she were a 68-year-old man rather than a 68-year-old woman? Would we think differently of her?
I met Clinton during her husband's first campaign for the White House. It was 1992, New Hampshire, and both Clintons had stopped at a coffee shop to greet the folks and get something to eat.
Trump's juvenilia stands in stark contrast to Obama's measured words.
I don't know if history will adjudge Barack Obama a great president, but he has been a necessary one.
Something about the Clintons sets the GOP to howling at the moon.
Travelgate eventually faded, and the nation somehow survived - American exceptionalism at work again.
Hillary Clinton may have lied about her emails, but Donald Trump lies about everything.
My heroes are not necessarily people of great ability but ones who did what I think I could not.