Since Donald Trump first landed tweet-first in the Oval Office, armchair psychiatrists have been trying to figure him out.

Why does he have so little regard for the truth—or for anything outside of his own self-interest? Why does he work so hard to sow hate and controversy? Why, in short, has his presidency been an unending freak show?

While no theory can explain Trump entirely, director Matt Turnauer offers valuable insight with the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? Even though the titular subject is an infamous figure from the 1950s—and even though Trump himself doesn’t appear until an hour or so in—Turnauer makes it clear that the 45th president is his real target.

Roy Cohn was a whiz kid of an attorney who won fame by (1) helping to prosecute and ultimately execute suspected spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg despite shaky evidence, and (2) serving as chief counsel to red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In both roles, he established himself as a litigator who was ruthless in his quest for victory.

A terrifying series of gestapo-style assaults, petition buying, bribery, mass media manipulation and systematic intimidation has disrupted the attempt of Ohio citizens to repeal a nearly billion-dollar bailout for two dangerously failing atomic reactors on Lake Erie.

The unprecedented assault threatens the referendum process in Ohio and across the nation.

It also threatens to keep on line two very old, dangerously decayed reactors where melt-downs and explosions could forever contaminate the Great Lakes region and more.

On Monday, October 21, petitioners with the anti-nuclear referendum fell 44,682 signatures short of the number needed to qualify for the November 2020 ballot to repeal the bailout.

Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts (OCAB), the anti-nuclear group, filed a preliminary injunction in US District Court to force Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose to extend the length of time they had to collect signatures.

Protest video

Columbus remembered the plight and resilience of the Kashmiri people on Sunday. October 27. Sponsored by CAIR. 

Ed Rampell is a Ukrainian-American L.A.-based freelance writer and author.

Her earliest memories were of endless wheat fields and the sweeping steppes. She also remembered being afraid of the police - and the bitter cold. My babushka advised me: “If your feet stay warm the rest of your body will, too.” Like Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof’s beloved dairyman who dreamed of being “a rich man,” my grandmother Dorothy Kwass was a Ukrainian Jew who migrated to America.

On my father’s paternal side, Samuel Alexander Rampell was born in Odessa. Shortly after Czar Alexander II’s 1881 assassination, vicious pogroms (race riots) were unleashed against Jews and little Samuel sailed to America with his mother.

The Kwasses, my dad’s maternal line, were innkeepers in Kiev’s shtetl (ghetto). Their name is derived from kvass, the fermented sweet drink served at their inn. When the menfolk were drafted around 1904 during the Russo-Japanese war they became draft dodgers and fled to the land of the free, with five-year-old Dorothy.