Listen6 minShareComment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave
You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- The man who rid France of its barbaric guillotine
- Introducing the Trump Legal Universe (and perhaps a doomed RNC)
- Republicans make mayhem while the speaker is stuck on the phone
- Alexei Navalny’s death is a blow to free society
The man who chopped the guillotine
Lee Hockstader’s latest column opens with a fact that floored me: For years after the 1969 moon landing, France was still guillotining people sentenced to death.
Yes, literally guillotining — or, to borrow the words of Robert Badinter, “taking a living man and cutting him in two.”
The barbarity of the practice so disgusted Badinter, who died last week at 95, that he devoted his time as France’s justice minister to abolishing capital punishment. In 1981, he achieved it, inspiring much of Europe to follow suit.
I don’t want to lift too many details from Lee’s well-crafted tribute, but one anecdote I can’t pass up: Much of Badinter’s family perished in the Holocaust, but Badinter’s anti-execution integrity extended even to the Nazi who deported Badinter’s own father to a death camp.
Advertisement
Badinter was responsible, however, for the Nazi’s extradition from Bolivia to France, where he was sentenced to life in prison. To Badinter, it was the right outcome. As Lee writes, the man believed that “courts should deliver justice … not vengeance.”
Monsieur Web
His web connects them all …
The superhero-movie-industrial complex had a horrible week with the release of “Madame Web,” which critics and audiences alike ruled an unmitigated flop.
But, boy, is it still a blast.
Madam Web was a cinematic tour de force
Writing? Abysmal.
Pacing? All over the place.
Acting? Not one line delivered convincingly.
Cannot recommend it enough
— Carla GuginHeaux (@bingomilf)
February 15, 2024 Sony Pictures might have some competition for most entertaining train wreck, however, with what Gene Robinson is calling the Trump Legal Universe, a multi-trial timeline beginning March 25 in which every day promises to be a spectacle, with former president Donald Trump at the very center. A preview:
Trump lawyer: “We strenuously object. … President Trump is going to now spend the next two months working on this trial instead of out on the campaign trail.”
Advertisement
Judge: “What is your legal argument?”
Lawyer: “That is my legal argument.”
Judge: “That is not a legal argument.”
Compared with this, “Madame Web’s” widely razzed “He was in the Amazon researching spiders with my mom right before she died” reads like Chekhov.
Let’s zoom elsewhere in the franchise, to where the tentpole Trump is trying to make third- or fourth-tier avenger Lara Trump into her own phenomenon. The former president has endorsed his daughter-in-law for co-chair of the Republican National Committee; critics say it’s an attempt to fleece donors into covering the Trump family’s bills.
“By golly, let’s hope so,” writes Catherine Rampell, who finds this a most encouraging development. Lara Trump, whose only qualification is being married to Eric Trump (okay, and producing a derivative country single), is the perfect person to royally screw up the RNC’s finances.
Advertisement
Which, Catherine writes, is the only path back to health: “The RNC needs to go broke, to be as poorly run as possible, if the Grand Old Party is to ever shake out of its Trump trance.”
Share this articleShare
Chaser: Kathleen Parker, who in 2016 infamously wrote that a Trump presidency would be fine, has changed her tune. She now tells the country to take Trump literally when he speaks.
And what have they done during that time, Dana Milbank wonders? The party, he writes, has “produced nothing but mayhem.”
It’s no wonder, he suggests, that voters are starting to notice, most recently evidenced by Democrats’ coup in this week’s special election to replace ousted Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).
Does the current dysfunction owe to Mike Johnson “deliberately and knowingly sabotaging the functioning of the U.S. government because he thinks it in his interest,” Dana asks, or has the speaker merely “taken leave of his mental faculties”?
Advertisement
A different idea: Speaker Johnson is just on hold.
Alexandra Petri has observed the congressman with a phone seemingly always to his ear, rendering him unable to talk to reporters, and she knows there is only one explanation for his legislative paralysis: He has been on a long, long pause while the party who will tell him what to do connects. But he does not doubt; he knows it will, and the world shall learn the will of the Voice.
More politics
This morning, Russia’s prison service announced that Alexei Navalny, the country’s most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had died in the Arctic penal colony where he spent the last months of his life unjustly detained.
The Editorial Board had written with great hope for and admiration of Navalny over the years, calling him a “voice of conscience” and lauding his refusal ever to be silenced, even when subjected to solitary confinement and other forms of torture.
Advertisement
Max Boot admired him, too, and he writes today that he is “filled with anger and despair.” It is directed not just at Putin, whose villainy no longer surprises Max, but at the Republicans at home who can’t seem to help but enable it.
Navalny knew, however, that a post-Putin Russia would one day arrive. He described his vision for it in fall 2022 in an eloquent op-ed his legal team conveyed to The Post. Now, a new generation of dissidents must take up his call: “The future model for Russia is not ‘strong power’ and a ‘firm hand,’ but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society.”
Smartest, fastest
- Fareed Zakaria followed along with Tucker Carlson’s recent trip to Russia — and concludes that the former Fox News host, like the populist right, hates what makes America great.
- George Will writes that President Biden’s dishwasher efficiency standards are a … dirty … joke.
- David Von Drehle writes that this week’s fatal shooting in the shadow of a Super Bowl celebration has Kansas City confronting a crisis that’s all too familiar.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
What are Trump’s allies
If his web connects them all?
Trapped — and soon dinner
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. Have a great long weekend!
Share Comments Sign up
You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
Lee Hockstader’s latest column opens with a fact that floored me: For years after the 1969 moon landing, France was still guillotining people sentenced to death.
Yes, literally guillotining — or, to borrow the words of Robert Badinter, “taking a living man and cutting him in two.”
The barbarity of the practice so disgusted Badinter, who died last week at 95, that he devoted his time as France’s justice minister to abolishing capital punishment. In 1981, he achieved it, inspiring much of Europe to follow suit.
I don’t want to lift too many details from Lee’s well-crafted tribute, but one anecdote I can’t pass up: Much of Badinter’s family perished in the Holocaust, but Badinter’s anti-execution integrity extended even to the Nazi who deported Badinter’s own father to a death camp.
Badinter was responsible, however, for the Nazi’s extradition from Bolivia to France, where he was sentenced to life in prison. To Badinter, it was the right outcome. As Lee writes, the man believed that “courts should deliver justice … not vengeance.”
His web connects them all …
The superhero-movie-industrial complex had a horrible week with the release of “Madame Web,” which critics and audiences alike ruled an unmitigated flop.
But, boy, is it still a blast.
Madam Web was a cinematic tour de force
Writing? Abysmal.
Pacing? All over the place.
Acting? Not one line delivered convincingly.
Cannot recommend it enough
Sony Pictures might have some competition for most entertaining train wreck, however, with what Gene Robinson is calling the Trump Legal Universe, a multi-trial timeline beginning March 25 in which every day promises to be a spectacle, with former president Donald Trump at the very center. A preview:
Trump lawyer: “We strenuously object. … President Trump is going to now spend the next two months working on this trial instead of out on the campaign trail.”
Judge: “What is your legal argument?”
Lawyer: “That is my legal argument.”
Judge: “That is not a legal argument.”
Compared with this, “Madame Web’s” widely razzed “He was in the Amazon researching spiders with my mom right before she died” reads like Chekhov.
Let’s zoom elsewhere in the franchise, to where the tentpole Trump is trying to make third- or fourth-tier avenger Lara Trump into her own phenomenon. The former president has endorsed his daughter-in-law for co-chair of the Republican National Committee; critics say it’s an attempt to fleece donors into covering the Trump family’s bills.
“By golly, let’s hope so,” writes Catherine Rampell, who finds this a most encouraging development. Lara Trump, whose only qualification is being married to Eric Trump (okay, and producing a derivative country single), is the perfect person to royally screw up the RNC’s finances.
Which, Catherine writes, is the only path back to health: “The RNC needs to go broke, to be as poorly run as possible, if the Grand Old Party is to ever shake out of its Trump trance.”
Chaser: Kathleen Parker, who in 2016 infamously wrote that a Trump presidency would be fine, has changed her tune. She now tells the country to take Trump literally when he speaks.
And what have they done during that time, Dana Milbank wonders? The party, he writes, has “produced nothing but mayhem.”
It’s no wonder, he suggests, that voters are starting to notice, most recently evidenced by Democrats’ coup in this week’s special election to replace ousted Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).
Does the current dysfunction owe to Mike Johnson “deliberately and knowingly sabotaging the functioning of the U.S. government because he thinks it in his interest,” Dana asks, or has the speaker merely “taken leave of his mental faculties”?
A different idea: Speaker Johnson is just on hold.
Alexandra Petri has observed the congressman with a phone seemingly always to his ear, rendering him unable to talk to reporters, and she knows there is only one explanation for his legislative paralysis: He has been on a long, long pause while the party who will tell him what to do connects. But he does not doubt; he knows it will, and the world shall learn the will of the Voice.
This morning, Russia’s prison service announced that Alexei Navalny, the country’s most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had died in the Arctic penal colony where he spent the last months of his life unjustly detained.
The Editorial Board had written with great hope for and admiration of Navalny over the years, calling him a “voice of conscience” and lauding his refusal ever to be silenced, even when subjected to solitary confinement and other forms of torture.
Max Boot admired him, too, and he writes today that he is “filled with anger and despair.” It is directed not just at Putin, whose villainy no longer surprises Max, but at the Republicans at home who can’t seem to help but enable it.
Navalny knew, however, that a post-Putin Russia would one day arrive. He described his vision for it in fall 2022 in an eloquent op-ed his legal team conveyed to The Post. Now, a new generation of dissidents must take up his call: “The future model for Russia is not ‘strong power’ and a ‘firm hand,’ but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society.”
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
What are Trump’s allies
If his web connects them all?
Trapped — and soon dinner
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. Have a great long weekend!
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
