1. A day after Mueller’s first public statement on his report, I conclude, first, that he didn’t punt. His remarks challenged the narrative of Trump and Barr. But he didn’t forcefully advance the ball either. His language was too oblique, lawyerly, neutral, and sparse to do that.

He didn’t have to call for impeachment nor spit fire, but he could have taken advantage of the platform afforded him to elaborate on his team’s investigative findings in a way that would have brought clarity to tens of millions as well as better position Congressional Democrats and a few courageous Republicans to carry out their political and constitutional duties. Had his words been forceful and pointed, they could have also cut deep holes in the false narrative tapestry of Trump, Barr, Fox News, and others to defend Trump’s indefensible actions.

2. Mueller opened and closed his statement by calling attention to the fact of massive and coordinated Russian interference in our elections. Fair enough; it should be addressed. But that isn’t the main problem facing our democratic and constitutional system. Trump and his gang are. This fact should have figured far more explicitly in Mueller’s statement yesterday.

3. I still like Pelosi’s approach to impeachment. I find that many of the Impeach Now advocates traffic in facile assumptions about the readiness of millions of Americans to jump on the impeachment bandwagon as well as the positive impact of an impeachment process on the elections. Pelosi is right that impeachment is, above all, a political process and thus the case for impeachment has to be built in Washington and around the country. But it isn’t built yet. Politics takes patience as well as boldness. This is a dynamic situation and it will be interesting to see what polls show next week.

4. Why isn’t a rebuke of Trump at the polls next year a powerful repudiation of Trump’s authoritarian mode of governing? Why isn’t it a deterrent to future presidents who might like to embrace his governing style? Does defeat of Trump at the ballot box really pale in impact to his impeachment, especially when the former is far more doable than the latter?

5. “The center cannot hold” has become the favored phrase of political commentators these days. And the results of the European Parliamentary elections have provided fresh meat for this argument as the left and, especially, the right gained ground at the expense of traditional parties.

That said, I would offer three thoughts on this matter. One is changes at the economic level alone don’t explain this phenomenon; two: the experience of each country requires close and concrete examination; and three: any idea that the center (which is a mass trend) is no longer of any political consequence is completely wrongheaded. Such a conclusion would doom our hope of defeating Trump next year. Unity — broad, diverse, and expansive — has to be the watchword in these perilous times.

I post this every Memorial Day to remember my friends whose lives were cut short in the Vietnam War. Let’s continue to lift our voices against the insanity of war and insist that peace be given a chance. Too many flowers have gone. SW 

Today, I will again lift a pint of ale in memory of my three friends and their comrades who died in Vietnam.

I honor them without honoring the aggressive and unjust war in which they fought.

I don’t know what their reasons were for joining the military, maybe it was simply that the draft gave them no choice, but it really doesn’t matter. What I do know, f0r sure, is that their lives were unnecessarily cut short.

As a young peace activist in the late 60s, I probably didn’t always make a distinction between the soldiers fighting the war and the war itself. The soldier and the general were equally responsible as I saw it.

But I think differently now. I place the main responsibility for war on its architects in high places and a social system – capitalism – whose logic is to expand, dominate, and make war.

Ricky, Tuna and Cotter — my friends, all of whom were good at merrymaking — were at the bottom of the food chain of war making, nothing but cannon fodder, They were working class kids whose lives didn’t count for much in our government’s war plans. None of them were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, which is why in no small measure they ended up with a gun in their hand so far away from their homes.

I will always wonder what kind of lives they would have lived has they safely returned. With no hero’s welcome, no counseling waiting for them, no easy slide into a well paying job, I can’t help but think if they would have had the internal resources and support to come to terms with their war experience and live productive lives?

I easily (perhaps unfairly) doubt it, because each of them was not that different from me, and I have no confidence at all that I could have made that transition. It was hard enough to grow up in the 1960s without the ghastly and up close bloodletting of Vietnam on my emotional resume.

I wish, though, that they had a chance. I wish that their lives hadn’t been wasted doing things that no one should be forced to do. I wish that they had the opportunity to live long and, to the degree possible, joyfully.

I miss them. I celebrate them. They were “my buddies, my friends.” I wish they could join me at the Bronx Ale House today for a pint in their honor, although knowing them, I suspect, a single pint wouldn’t quite satisfy them, or me for that matter.

I also wish that we would toast to the millions in our generation who opposed the war. Some of them lost their lives, some of them went to jail, and some of them were scarred by the experience. They, too, deserve to be honored. In choosing to oppose the war, it was our generation’s “Finest Hour.”

Finally, I like to think that the four of us would clink glasses to the people of Vietnam who suffered so much during and after the war, and who are now rebuilding their country in conditions of peace.

Maybe that would be too much to expect. Unfortunately, I will never know. They will join me only in memory this afternoon. I wish it were different, but I will treasure their memory anyway, as I wash down my pint of ale.

The singular focus on the draconian features of the abortion bill passed by the Alabama legislature is understandable. They are draconian. But such a narrow focus can easily become a problem when it is turned into a pivot by anti-abortion advocates and too many well meaning people to legitimize a more “reasonable and humane” legislative bill to limit a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions.

The framing in this contentious fight isn’t pro-life vs pro-choice, but pro-choice vs anti- choice.

War threats and the peace movement is barely in sight. Ironically, peace sentiment endures, and broadly so, and acts as a restraint on Trump’s war making. The Iraq debacle still resonates with lots of people across the country. This enduring feeling provides the ground on which to not only challenge the Trump administration’s militarist rhetoric and actions, but also the assumptions that underlie both.

Here is an interview of Linda Greenhouse, who covered the Supreme Court for many years for the NYT and has few peers when it comes to understanding the court and its decisions. Its focus is on Roe vs Wade and the struggle for abortion rights. It took place shortly before yesterday’s draconian action by the Alabama legislature to outlaw abortion. I thought you also might find it illuminating.