Michael Smith - Santa Maria

During this holiday season, I am reminded of a story I read many years ago by writer and trial lawyer Louis Nizer. Nizer was most famous for his defense of those who were blacklisted as Communists during the 1950s. Anyway, Nizer’s brief story, “An Editorial Lost in a News Item,” recounts a newspaper article about […]

Now that the political charade of the Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare is over, maybe Donald Trump can pivot toward actually making America great again and abandon the continual Sturm and Drang that has characterized his new administration. The best thing about Trump, and maybe his only redeeming quality, is his lack of core political […]

Taking his cue from the man in the White House, Richard W. Neufeld opens his rebuttal (“Obamacare needs to go,” May 11) to my May 4 letter (“Trump’s an underachiever”) with an ad hominem attack suggesting I live in “La La Land” (of course, if that’s the place where Emma Stone lives, take me there). […]

Despite somersaults and cartwheels by the Trump administration to come up with a list of achievements in its first 100 days, the simple fact is that the Donald has accomplished precious little during his presidential honeymoon other than take several trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort where he seems content to brush up on his golf. […]