Portside

Fasten your seatbelts

How Democrats learned to tell the plain truth and like it

Ours is a nation built upon a set of ideas — ideas not rooted in bloodlines and burial plots but in values and ideals. Anyone who doesn’t understand something so fundamental about the United States is unfit for high office.

Fighting the Good Fight (in 1909), Teach Literacy, Go to Jail (1854), Deadly But Very Popular (1964), Pretending to Drain the Swamp (1984), Orgy of Police Brutality (1874), McCarthyism's Downfall (1964), Hitler's Friends in the House of Lords (1934)

Signs that MAGA is enmeshed in post-Vietnam War culture begin with its namesake. Make America Great Again is an adoption of Ronald Reagan’s assertion that it was “Morning in America Again,” - the country was moving on from its Vietnam War nightmare.

The U.S. Senate must reject Abrams’ nomination. Diplomacy should be guided by individuals who prioritize human rights, transparency and accountability, not by those who have enabled atrocities.

Pinochet's men accused of Letelier murder in 1978. Dick Cheney's hypocrisy in 2000. Reagan's racist dog-whistle in 1980. Dixiecrats defend the poll tax in 1948. Chicago Freedom Movement in 1966. Birth of a hero in 1848. Toxic-waste emergency in 1978.

A long-time Republican operative has come forward to spill the beans about the extensive plotting by Reagan allies to force the hostages to endure captivity for months so that voters would deny Carter a second term.