The Trump Legal Team's Remarkable Letter to Mueller  —  The New York Times has published two long letters that the president's lawyers sent to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in January 2018 and June 2017.  These letters argue, essentially, that the president can't obstruct justice.

Trump's legal memo to Robert Mueller is a recipe for tyranny  —  A clear and present danger to the rule of law  —  Essentially all presidents sooner or later end up commissioning lawyers to put forward an expansive view of presidential power, but those lawyers take pains to argue …

Inside the White House During the Syrian ‘Red Line’ Crisis  —  In the course of a presidency, a U.S. president says millions of words in public.  You never know which of them end up cementing a certain impression.  For Barack Obama, one of those phrases would be “red line.”

A Clueless “Final Year”  —  Remember the Duck Rabbit?  That's the famous image that, seen one way, looks like a duck but, seen from another angle, looks like a rabbit.  The image has provided fodder for children's books and also philosophers, its inherent ambiguity being catnip to both light fancy and epistemological lucubration.