The Alleged Editor

Just a few days into the January 6th hearings, one thing already seems clear: the Former Guy is guilty of everything we watched him do on live television. Under the circumstances it would be incomprehensible if he were to somehow evade justice yet again. On the other hand, this is the United States of America. What is our history if not the record of us repeatedly machine-gunning ourselves in the feet? Hell, never mind history. Consider this single aspect of the present: Liz Cheney has become the Ranking Apostate of the Republican Party, due to her work on the House Select Committee investigating the attack …

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With the Republican Party hell bent on capturing Congress once and for all this November, and the White House two years hence, it may be time to ask if perhaps someone ought to consider taking a few prudent preventive measures, lest our democracy—such as it is—should be snatched away forever. We hasten to add that, in proposing that somebody actually do something, we do not mean to give offense to anyone. As others before us have observed, there is more than enough incivility in the public discourse already. Besides, one can’t be too careful these days. One never knows when a partisan from either camp …

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Memorial Day is coming pretty soon. It will be here in ten or eleven days, depending on whether you count the day itself. That’s a point one could argue either way. If we have learned anything since a Black man was elected President, it’s that people can argue about anything, and come to blows over nothing. Our seniority obliges us to keep posterity in mind when we write the news. We must imagine that some part of our readership is as yet unborn. That part comes easily enough; one might even say we were born for this.* It’s getting more and more difficult, though, to …

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The Union Leader* revealed on Sunday that its former publisher William Loeb sexually abused his daughter and his step-daughter. Ordinarily we try to avoid clichés, but this is a special occasion: yes, we are shocked, but no, we are not surprised. Readers under a certain age may not appreciate the magnitude of this revelation. In recent decades the statewide daily has been but a shadow of its former self. For more than thirty years, though, beginning in 1946, the Union Leader was New Hampshire’s Pravda and Bill Loeb was its Stalin. His vitriolic editorials ran on the front page, thundering against anyone who dared to …

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It’s shocking, this cartoon—let’s admit that right up front. Sadly, it’s also accurate. Some might say it’s offensive to depict the revered personification of our great nation being stabbed in the back. Most likely to voice that objection, we’d wager, would be those who wielded the blades to begin with. If they were to be honest—some imagination is required here—these people would say that the old buzzard has outlived his usefulness. God knows there’s a certain cohort of people in this country—we’d use the term “class,” but that’s verboten—who have worked Uncle Sam like a rented mule. Their next move will be to take him …

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