The Washington Post has performed a public service by keeping count of the number of falsehoods and outright lies future inmate Donald Trump Sr. has told the American public while president: 22,000 as of last month. One lie that he told before the 2016 election, but repeated many times after was that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were celebrated by cheering crowds in Jersey City, New Jersey and that he witnessed this while watching the carnage on television.   TV, Trump’s once, current, and future predominant pastime.  That is, assuming his conduct in prison doesn’t lead to suspension of his viewing privileges. […]

Leaving aside the unanswerable of whether God is a subscriber (See HL 117) we turn to elective office transition, a subject we have not insubstantial experience with.  We chaired the transition of two different state attorneys general and one governor, all in New York.  The second of those three for A.G.-elect Eliot Spitzer in 1998 is instructive of the damage about to be inflicted on the nation.  The incumbent then, Dennis Vacco as Trump this time, refused to concede defeat and prevented the cooperation necessary for an orderly and productive transition. […]

Classic liberals of an age, and certainly of a certain age, have been voting adults during both the Nixon and Trump presidencies.  (Classic liberals always vote)  During both, the question of whether a former president should be tried, and if convicted imprisoned, was top of mind for years.  With Trump even before inauguration. […]

In a brief respite from the excessive monitoring of the most recent polls in swing states and with enough time to watch selected matches a second, and with one a third time, HL delivers its annual review of Roland Garros, the quintessential French Tennis Experience played on the red brick dust Terre Battue courts. […]

As we hold our collective breath during the last pre-judgment month, we fear many plausible terribles. Such as Trump’s self-inflicted death from Covid-19 and the “morbid obesity” that Nancy likes to mention – or Melania mercifully assisting him along the lines of a theory advanced about Warren Harding’s wife Florence in “The Strange Death of President Harding” – or Trump ordering Iran nuked as he told Rush Limbaugh he might – or the kidnap, murder and assault on a Trump-disfavored governor and state capital – or a massive spike in Covid cases resulting in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths and the suppression of conventional voting – OR any other terrible massive October surprise from Trump or the Id.  And far surpassing the mere plausibility of each such terrible scenario is the likelihood that one huge bad thing will happen. […]

With “volume” 113 HL returns from the August furlough to report what was saved, what lost and the sui generis at this year’s United States Open Tennis Championships.  This was the first U.S. championship HL did not attend since the 1962 tournament at Forest Hills.  But we watched closely along with other inhabitants of the Global Village. […]

With a post like this, a disclosure is obligatory.  The woke young cannibals at The New York Times will deem it a confession.  On the morning of March 13, 2020, preceding the evening when Trump proclaimed the Covid-19 outbreak a “National Emergency (that he proceeded to ignore and worsen immeasurably) we left our apartment near Lincoln Center for a house we’ve had since 1987 in the Chatham/Ghent/Austerlitz corner of New York’s Taconic Hills.  With the exception of five days spent downstate, burying a relative and having surgery, HL has lived upstate since. […]

It’s always amusing to watch and listen to TV and radio newscasters feign shock and squeamishness when reporting words such as those spoken by Representative Ted Yoho about Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of das kapital.  We assume that like most of us, they hear such words many, if not most, days and have uttered such themselves.  AOC smartly admitted the frequency, but certainly not the propriety, of such language in her navigation of New York City. […]

In his January 29, 2020 New York Times opinion column, Charlie Warzel warned us to consider what to “. . . Do When The Culture War Comes For You?”  Charlie said no one would be spared by the inquisition but some were more able to survive.  “[F]oot soldiers” in America’s newsrooms needed and deserved protection by the owners, management and editors of news media outlets. […]

We are fortunate that it’s more complicated and will take longer to purport to grant the District of Columbia statehood than remove Winston Churchill’s name from a Maryland high school up the Potomac from the Capital.  During that elongation let’s think about what we are trying to do, why and the foreseeable consequences. […]