The Daily Beast

From 2013-2016, Kevin wrote a weekly column in The Daily Beast on politics, the Founding Fathers, and the American Constitution .  And North Korea.  And being short.

PYONGYANG PRIMER

I’ve never been good at describing what it was like to land Pyongyang. “Strange” or “surprising” doesn’t cut it. It was real, but unreal. Otherworldly, yet populated. I imagine what space probe Philae might have felt this week, had it landed on that comet and found people already there....

JAMES MADISON'S FIREWORK PHOBIA

Ooooh! Aaahhh! It’s fireworks day! Tonight, millions of Americans from sea to shining sea will gasp at a night sky filled with brilliant colors and loud explosions. Millions of other Americans will lament they live in cities with strapped budgets that throw piddling BBQs and hand out sparklers. Whatever works.

SHOULD THE US REALLY PAY A KIM'S RANSOM?

“We cannot be told we can’t see something by Kim Jong Un, of all fucking people.” —George Clooney 

It was a complete coincidence that while Sony Pictures and theater operators across the country were cratering under the ostensibly idle threats of faceless (if not entirely toothless) cyberhackers—leading to understandable and justified laments of how we’ve “let the terrorists win”—I was reading about the blackmail and extortion of one of our Founding Fathers.

.