Jacob Weisberg

Professional politicians often claim they are not professional politicians. Trump genuinely isn't one.

Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue.

Conservative journalists don't just have the inside track on Republican strategy - they help devise it.

It's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights.

To describe the world Michael Jackson has created around himself as a childhood fantasy isn't quite accurate. Thanks to wealth and celebrity, he has been able to live as a superannuated child. With the help of plastic surgery and dramatic affectation, he has made himself look and sound pre-pubescent.

If there's one epithet the Right never tires of, it's 'elitism.'

Like academic Marxists, who are their sisters under the skin, libertarians are far more interested in an ideal world than in the one where ordinary humans live.

Blacks as a group have voted Democratic since the 1930s. The GOP has not courted them in any real way since the 1960s, focusing instead on attracting white constituencies hostile to civil rights and African-Americans in general.

Southern Republicans are guided by the Bible. Western Republicans read the Constitution. Seen in historical terms, it's the difference between a movement descended from George Wallace and one that harks back to Barry Goldwater.

The most important newspapers in this country need to exist. Our democracy needs them. Life as we know it would be unthinkable without them.

As a political party, the Libertarians have always been more party than political.

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections.