Author

Jay Bookman
Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He is now a regular contributor to the Georgia Recorder, which first published this essay.
Bookman: Unholy night – A Trump White House Christmas coup caper
By: Jay Bookman - November 16, 2023
It was a Christmas party at the Trump White House, and despite the festive decorations, the trees and the wreaths and the red-and-green bunting, the mood must have been grim. A few days earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had firmly rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking the overthrow of election results […]
Bookman: Trump, ‘Cop City’ RICO cases show danger of such laws
By: Jay Bookman - September 21, 2023
Georgia’s wide-ranging version of an anti-racketeering act, or RICO, puts a powerful weapon in the hands of prosecutors. And like any powerful weapon, it can be used for good, or for ill. The best safeguards against its abuse must be judges and juries, and both will come into play in the two major RICO-based prosecutions […]
Bookman: The season for accountability has arrived
By: Jay Bookman - August 2, 2023
A democracy has the right – no, the obligation — to defend itself against those who attack it and seek to destroy it. That’s what Capitol Police were forced to do on Jan. 6, as they physically fought off thousands of attackers. It’s what special counsel Jack Smith, operating in a different role, has now […]
Bookman: In MTG’s grimy paws, a beautiful video becomes something sickening
By: Jay Bookman - April 10, 2023
“I’ll say it again,” Marjorie Taylor Greene says in a new video labeled “The Predator President.” “Democrats are the party of pedophiles.” What follows in the video is a compilation of interactions between Joe Biden and various young people, attempting to make the case that the 80-year-old president sexually abuses young children. This is what […]
Bookman: Marjorie Taylor Greene ascends in GOP because of stupidity, not in spite of it
By: Jay Bookman - March 2, 2023
Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot, and idiots, as a rule, aren’t interesting people. They aren’t interesting because their idiocy overshadows all other aspects of their personality. Greene is more an exemplar of that rule than an exception to it. Nonetheless, in their wisdom, the voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District have elected Greene as […]
Bookman: Georgia’s gift to Trump is a lump of coal in stocking
By: Jay Bookman - December 19, 2022
When the history books about Donald Trump are written – and believe me, there will be many – Georgia will have earned a place of pride. It’s only a mild exaggeration to say that Georgia has been to Trump what Waterloo was to Napoleon, what Saratoga was to King George and his redcoats, what Gettysburg […]
Top Republicans embrace Marjorie Taylor Greene’s violent rhetoric
By: Jay Bookman - October 21, 2022
In a recent campaign video, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, likened Democrats to destructive feral hogs allowed to range free and destroy the American countryside. But Marjorie had a solution: As the camera followed her, she grabbed a rifle and climbed aboard a waiting helicopter, where she tracked down and shot a […]
Bookman: Mark Meadows could come to regret acquiescence to Trump coup attempt
By: Jay Bookman - July 5, 2022
For two hours last Tuesday, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson calmly, matter-of-factly testified to the commission of high crimes by the former president and by many of those around him. She told her fellow Americans that Trump had been informed on the morning of Jan. 6 that the mob assembled by his command […]
Responsible gun owners know it’s nuts to permit firearms that scare police
By: Jay Bookman - June 7, 2022
Last month, an untrained 18-year-old kid, armed with an AR-15 and multiple high-capacity magazines, intimidated an entire police force into doing nothing while he slaughtered their town’s helpless schoolchildren. For more than an hour, while kids frantically texted and called 911 begging to be rescued, the “good guys” did nothing. They did nothing because they […]
Let us count the ways the political right has lied about its plans to limit reproductive freedom
By: Jay Bookman - May 6, 2022
For almost five decades, Roe v. Wade has been established American law, guaranteeing the constitutional right of choice to all Americans. Even those Supreme Court justices now ready to toss that precedent aside have previously testified under oath during their Senate confirmation hearings that they believed Roe is established law that ought to be respected. […]
Veteran U.S. journalist: ‘We the people’ are in dangerous territory
By: Jay Bookman - March 7, 2022
The state of our union is precarious. It is precarious not because of some outside threat – outside threats we can still handle. It is precarious because we have forgotten our way, because we find ourselves increasingly seduced by a perverted, stunted and selfish notion of freedom. It is precarious because some of us have […]
Bookman: Trump continues to threaten violence against those who stand for rule of law
By: Jay Bookman - February 3, 2022
Like his buddy Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is a thug willing to use violence to achieve what he cannot achieve by legitimate means. He has shown a willingness to do so in the past, and because he himself has paid no price, he is threatening to do so in the future.