Slimantics: Quotable Mississippians

The best compliment you can pay to David Crews' "The Mississippi Book of Quotations," is the urge to wonder aloud, "Why didn't somebody think of this before?" After all, Mississippi has produced some of the finest writers in the English language as well as some of the world's greatest singer/songwriters. The paradox has long been noted: Mississippi, the least literate of states, has produced a disproportionate amount of great story-tellers.

Peniel Joseph, Texas Perspectives: Carson nomination signals a Trump neoconfederacy

The selection of Ben Carson to be secretary of housing and urban development is yet more evidence that Donald Trump and his transition team are embracing an approach that uses race as cover for a return to the racially oppressive past. Carson, whose professional ascent was aided by civil rights victories and affirmative action, has pointedly rejected the very methods that allowed him to access opportunities that were unheard of in America's pre-civil rights years.

Russiaa s back, bigger and badder than ever

Back in March 2014, with Russian-speaking forces patrolling the streets of Crimea, until then a part of the sovereign country of Ukraine, I wrote an article arguing that, "We have entered a new Cold War." Fast-forward to this surreal moment in American - and global - history, and it appears that Vladimir Putin's Russia is handily winning this Cold War 2.0. This is no longer a battle between Communism and capitalism/democracy.

Jonathan Bernstein: There’s nothing Teflon about Trump

Donald Trump won the election. That's a fact. But since then, Trump, his supporters and even some pundits are making various claims about his victory that aren't true, starting with his Orwellian assertions to have won in a landslide or even recording "one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history".

We must know if Russia tipped the U.S. presidential election | Editorial

Just 27 days ago, in what was essentially a Paul Revere midnight ride through cyberspace, the director of the National Security Agency announced that the United States is Russia's play toy. "There shouldn't be any doubts in anybody's mind: This was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily," Admiral Michael Rogers said of hacked material released throughout the 2016 campaign.

Trump mocks Wall Street Journal editorial board: ‘I don’t…

President-elect Donald Trump fired back at the Wall Street Journal editorial board after it criticized his deal to stop manufacturer Carrier from shipping several hundred jobs overseas. Earlier this month, the editorial board characterized the deal - which will keep several hundred jobs in Indiana in exchange for a $7 million tax break, while allowing the company to outsource over a thousand jobs - as a "shakedown," and said "America won't become more prosperous by forcing companies to make noneconomic investments."

Here’s how to respond to Trump’s new normal

"Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony." A month after Election Day, and we're past parody and into Kakfa, who wrote that one-sentence story, as the President-elect moonlights as an executive producer of "Celebrity Apprentice."

The superego and the ID

Time will tell whether the next President initiates what would be cruel and disastrous mass deportations of undocumented immigrants - including by denying federal funding to cities that refuse to hand over names and addresses of those in their midst. In the meantime, Mayor de Blasio, proud to lead what others smear as a sanctuary city, is holding a match and threatening to destroy the records of nearly a million holders of the local ID card he created just for New Yorkers.

Jeff Sadow: Stop pestering Louisiana electors for Trump

Ignorance does not lead to bliss, as the content of unhappy communiquA s raining down on Louisiana's presidential electors proves. Since Nov. 8, Louisiana's Republican electors collectively have received more than 100,000 messages variously suggesting, imploring or demanding that each of the eight pledged to Republican President-elect Donald Trump not vote for him when the Electoral College "meets" on Dec. 19. On that date, in state capitals and the District of Columbia, electors will congregate to cast their ballots; in winner-take-all Louisiana, the Republican ticket received 58 percent of the vote.

‘Lessons learned’ about Russia

A supporter of President-elect Donald Trump takes a photo of him on her smartphone at a rally in Baton Rouge, La., on Friday. THE STRONGEST indication that the Obama administration has not adequately disclosed or responded to Russian interference in the presidential election may be that President-elect Donald Trump still denies that it happened.

Let the Peace Cross stand

ATOWERING, rose-hued cross on a highway median strip a mile west of the District, in the Maryland suburbs, is a symbol of several things - of Christianity, certainly; of the sacrifice of soldiers from Prince George's County who died in World War I, in whose honor the cross was erected in the 1920s; and of the tangled jurisprudence and fervent debate regarding religious displays in the public realm, which has flummoxed the Supreme Court and other tribunals for years.