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My father, Richard Rampell, was a photographer who used to exhibit his artsy black and white pictures in Manhattan’s top photo galleries. Always a good provider, Dad supported our family by teaching at Boys High in Bed Stuy, explaining: “All artists require patrons. Even Michelangelo needed patrons. By working as a teacher, I can support myself and be my own patron – and therefore just shoot whatever I want.” In this way Dad was immune from the ups and downs of the marketplace for artistes, was unfailingly able to pay our monthly bills, but was still able to exhibit his pictures alongside the greats of the photography world, such as the abstract lens meister Minor White, social realist Cornell Capa and Arthur Rothstein, that Dust Bowl poet.

Impeachment dramas on Capitol Hill have routinely skipped over a question that we should be willing to ask even if Congress won’t: “What about a president’s unimpeachable offenses?”

The question is the flip side of one that Republican Gerald Ford candidly addressedwhen he was the House minority leader 50 years ago: “What, then, is an impeachable offense? The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

By narrowly defining which offenses are impeachable, political elites are implicitly telling us which offenses aren’t.

So, when the House approved two articles of impeachment on Donald Trump in December 2019 and one impeachment article last month, the actions were much too late and much too little.

The Pakistani government should never, under any circumstances and no matter the pressure, normalize with Israel. Doing so is not only dangerous - as it will embolden an already vile, racist, violent apartheid Israel - but it would also be considered a betrayal of a historic legacy of mutual solidarity, collective affinity and brotherhood that have bonded Palestinians and Pakistanis for many generations.

Pandering to Israel as part of the political process in the United States has become part of the DNA of both major parties.

The job of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations must have some kind of curse on it as it seems to attract a type of woman who seeks to prove her suitability by running up a tally of how many wars she can start and how many people she can kill. One recalls fondly Bill Clinton’s monstrous Madeleine Albright, who famously declared the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as “worth it” due to the sanctions that Washington had imposed and enforced. And then there was Barack Obama’s darling Samantha Power, who was the spokesperson for the completely unnecessary slaughter of Syrians and Libyans to bring them democracy. And, most recently, we have had Nikki Haley, who didn’t start her own war but kept the ones ongoing during her watch on the boil while also taking on the task of being the most strident defender of Israel’s war crimes.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- By seizing power, Myanmar's new coup leader Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has protected his murky financial investments and the military's domination, but some of his incoming international cash flow might now be up for grabs.

Sr. Gen. Min spent much of his military career as a quiet, publicity-shy officer steadily promoted to higher positions before grabbing absolute power at dawn on February 1, six months before his mandatory retirement on his 65th birthday July 3.

Among other goals, Sr. Gen. Min apparently hopes he has protected himself, his family, and military colleagues from possible investigation over their extensive, lucrative financial deals.

"His financial interests must be considered as a motive for his coup," the Justice for Myanmar campaign group of activists said.

"Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has ultimate authority over Myanmar’s two military conglomerates -- Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL)," the group said.

“It is long past time for . . . a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security . . .”

Yes, yes, yes. These words cut to the soul. Can we create a grown-up America? This is how it begins.

The quote is from a letter to President Biden, put forward in early February by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Victims of Torture and signed by 111 organizations, demanding that the new president shut down, at long last, the prison hellhole at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Of all the daunting tasks Joe Biden faces, especially vital is the inspection of dangerously embrittled atomic reactors still operating in the United States.

A meltdown at any one of them would threaten the health and safety of millions of people while causing major impact to an already struggling economy. The COVID-19 pandemic would complicate and add to the disaster. A nuclear power plant catastrophe would severely threaten accomplishments Biden is hoping to achieve in his presidency.

The problem of embrittlement is on the top of the list of nuclear power concerns. The “average age”—length of operation—of nuclear power plants in the U.S., the federal government’s Energy information Agency, reported in 2019 was 38 years.

Now, in 2021, the “average age” of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is 40 years—the length of time originally seen when nuclear power began in the U.S. for how long plants could operate before embrittlement set in.

Lawyers galore have fled the prospect of representing Donald Trump at his upcoming Impeachment Trial (the sequel).

So his pardoned consigliere Steve Bannon (who knows his Nazi history) wants The Donald to testify in person. It’s a serious Hitlerian scenario.

In 1923, Adolf tried to overthrow Bavaria’s state government. His violent rant at a Munich beerhall sparked an armed conflict that killed eight (Adolf dislocated his shoulder, then hid at a friend’s house).

His high-profile trial jump-started Hitler’s quest for fascist power.

Trump’s own “beerhall putsch” left five dead, plus two police suicides. He pledged to “be there with you” but hid like Hitler.

Trump’s paramilitary Death Squad meant to murder the likes of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Bernie Sanders. They crushed the skull of one cop and gleefully assaulted others. Many were professionally trained and heavily armed.

Trump is currently hiding in a Floridian Elba, barely seen or heard.

For his neo-Nazi cult, Trump’s return to the global spotlight would likely trigger waves of armed assault.

“Be very still, and listen,” Paul DeMain told us. In the act of offering tobacco to the fire, he encouraged us to offer up that which we no longer wished to carry in our bodies, in our lives and in our souls. “But be careful what you ask to throw away, because the grandfathers will decide how that will happen in their own way.”

We were five minutes late for the start of the Full Moon Ceremony at the Line 3 resistance camp  in Pallisade, Minn. Fifteen masked and COVID-tested climate activists, we had driven 1600 miles from Maine and Massachusetts. If we hadn’t taken that time-consuming three point turn up I-94 toward Milwaukee we would have gotten there right on time.

But time zones and consumption patterns change, the border between ceremony and sunset is fluid, and the pattern of moonrise on macadam is malleable in the cold North Woods. In the offing, we were welcomed into the growing circle at the pipeline resistance camp with an offering of sweet smoke brushed over our heads and bodies from a brazier of burning sage, calming our jangled nerves and helping us plant our feet firmly again on solid, indeed frozen, ground.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Myanmar's military seized power in a coup on February 1, detained internationally disgraced civilian leader Aung
San Suu Kyi and other recently elected officials, and declared a one-year State of Emergency because voting was marred by "terrible
fraud."

Commander-in-chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing's security forces moved at dawn -- six months before his term expires in June -- prompting
speculation he may have been motivated to protect his extensive, murky financial investments and block any weakening of the military's
political domination.

The military's Myawaddy Television announced Sr. Gen. Min was now ruling and a State of Emergency would be enforced for one year,
starting immediately.

"The voter lists which were used during the multiparty general election which was held on the 8th of November were found to have huge
discrepancies and the Union Election Commission failed to settle this matter," the televised statement said.

"There was terrible fraud in the voter list."

The announcement pointed to the 2008 constitution which states: