Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.

Some people, such as the unemployed coal miners and steelworkers of the Rust Belt, have been left behind by growing prosperity.

Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender - and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.

Logic, fact, morality, legality, ideology: All of it is irrelevant in understanding the Party of Trump. Republicans have made crystal clear that nothing matters to them other than partisanship.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

I know who Queen Elizabeth represents. I know she's the head of the British state. I know she has all sorts of titles in relation to different regiments in the British army. She knows my history. She knows I was a member of the IRA. She knows I was in conflict with her soldiers, yet both of us were prepared to rise above all of that.

My mother's family didn't speak much about Europe: My mother was born in 1935, and her new-world parents were the sort who didn't want to worry their children about the war.

We do not covet one inch of Lebanese territory, and the basis for the peace treaty between our two countries will be the international border, which exists now, between Rosh Haniqra and Ras en Naqura.