Stephen Gottlieb

My wife and I met and courted in Iran while we were both in the U.S. Peace Corps. Our first date – I think it was in the late Spring of 1966 – was a walk through the grand bazaar in Tehran. It has now been bombed as part of the hostilities among the U.S., Israel and Iran.

What’s going on in the Middle East among Israel, the U.S., Iran and whoever else?

The issues are too large to address in a brief commentary but it’s important to see the scope of the problem.

What kind of president threatens friends like Greenland and Denmark and complements enemies like Putin’s Russia?

The big stories right now, in terms of popular and press reaction appear to be the attack on Venezuela, seizure of its president, and the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.

President Trump wants us to bow to him. He tries to impress us by gilding the White House with gold, paving over the Rose Garden, and taking control of the American military and a Latin American country, accompanied by disclosure that the US Mint is considering “a commemorative coin featuring President Trump,” breaking with tradition, not to put living presidents on money that began with George Washington.

Charles Touhey spoke to local Returned Peace Corps Volunteers last month. Charles was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Micronesia. Once home he immersed himself in the needs of homeownership for African-Americans in the South End of Albany.

Lawyers get into everything – that’s why I wanted to be an attorney. Early in my practice, the Legal Aid Society of St. Louis put me to work for clients in a poor part of town who were being doused with poisonous chemicals.

The Constitution prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” We’ve gone to citizenship proceedings of lovely people with Hispanic last names, even a little accent.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments about whether the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment means what it says, that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”