I was seven years old when Neil Simon’s Broadway play The Odd Couple became a TV series. Forty-five years later, I still remember Oscar and Felix as perfect embodiments of the liberated and the oppressed—which, I suppose, might reveal something about my own organizational... Read More →

  “Life is cheap” is an expression usually reserved for primitive peoples or violent times, be it warring tribes and clans slaughtering each other like chickens or the showdown-at-noon culture of the American Wild West. At least drawing six-shooters was between two men... Read More →

Sometimes it is difficult to know how to pray, and we are helped by the words of others. The following is a prayer for the vulnerable, particularly the unborn, taken from Psalm 35. Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with t... Read More →

  Once in a while, I come across a quotation that clears away the fog and threatens to fundamentally reorient my thinking. I had such a moment recently, reading an excerpt from a letter written by a father to his 18-year-old adopted son. Here it... Read More →

While New York’s numbers have been stable for a while, the first weekend of October brought unsettling reports of a rising number of positive tests for coronavirus in certain New York City neighborhoods (and a couple of adjacent counties). Read More →

When the president announced his new Executive Order, I was called by the redoubtable Cathy Ruse, who was one of my own main allies on Capitol Hill thirty years ago when I was going door to door, trying to sell this bill.  Cathy sent me congratulations, for it looked like a... Read More →