Columnists

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a presidential and parliamentary election June 24—jumping the gun by more than a year—the outcome seemed foreordained: the country is under a state of emergency, Erdogan has imprisoned more than 50,000 of his opponents, dismissed 140,000 from their jobs, jailed a presidential candidate, and launched an attack on Syria’s Kurds, that is popular with most Turks. -more-

On February 16th, the Justice Department unveiled the first of four pillars of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into interference in the 2016 election: the indictment of 13 Russians for Internet-based meddling. Since then the Mueller investigation has been quiet but there's new evidence that they are moving forward with the other three pillars of their inquiry: collusion, obstruction and hacking.

On April 30, the New York Times published the roughly fifty questions that the Mueller probe wants to ask Donald Trump, under oath. These questions are primarily about campaign coordination with Russia -- collusion -- and about possible obstruction of justice.

The collusion aspect of the Mueller probe explore the possibility of illicit cooperation between Russian operatives, involved in election interference and hacking, and the Trump campaign. -more-

Acceptance of painful emotions, and reinterpreting emotions as non-painful, are two of many variations on the same basic idea. This is a basic idea that comprises a large part of the "meditation" that I have practiced for more than the past three decades. The basic idea is a bit hard to put into words. Yet I'll venture this: emotions carry the weight that we voluntarily or involuntarily give them. -more-

On May 8, 2018, Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union, which severely limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium fuel and other activities necessary to make nuclear weapons. -more-