Author

Jay Bookman

Jay Bookman

Jay Bookman is a columnist at the Georgia Recorder, a media outlet of the States Newsroom. He covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He was awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press. The Florida Phoenix is part of the nonprofit States Newsroom.

COMMENTARY

Unholy night – A Trump White House Christmas coup caper

By: - November 17, 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 […]

COMMENTARY

Right-wing culture warrior attacks hurt military recruiting

By: - October 6, 2023

By 2017, the U.S. military knew it had a serious problem in the ranks. In a survey of more than 80,000 personnel, one out of four minority service members had reported that they had experienced racial or ethnic harassment by fellow soldiers in the previous year; as a result, roughly a third of those were […]

Bookman: More evidence for Tooth Fairy than Georgia 2020 election fraud

By: - September 10, 2023

According to a poll conducted last month by the University of Georgia, 63% of Georgia Republican voters still claim to believe “there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.” At this point, almost three years after the election, that’s like an adult believing in the Tooth Fairy, only worse. There’s at least some […]

COMMENTARY

Bookman: The season for accountability has arrived

By: - 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 […]

From Clayton County to Buffalo, Biden is right about white supremacist terrorism

By: - May 20, 2023

In March, a U.S. judge here in Georgia sentenced 48-year-old Larry Foxworth to 20 years in federal prison for firing multiple gunshots into two late-night convenience stores in Clayton County. Foxworth’s shooting binge wasn’t an act of random violence. It also wasn’t personal. It had a purpose, a motivation, an ideology behind it. “Foxworth told […]

COMMENTARY

In MTG’s grimy paws, a beautiful video becomes something sickening

By: - April 9, 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 […]

COMMENTARY

Bookman: Potential indictments of former president not created equal

By: - March 23, 2023

Let me ask a question, purely theoretical: Should the justice system treat a former president of the United States just as it would treat any other American citizen? As long as it’s just theoretical, the obvious answer is yes, of course. As Americans, we have no kings, no untouchable royalty. We are all equal before […]

COMMENTARY

Bookman: Marjorie Taylor Greene ascends in GOP because of stupidity, not in spite of it

By: - March 4, 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 their […]

COMMENTARY

Fulton indictments coming in 2020 election probe, just not reeling big fish

By: - February 16, 2023

There will be indictments. They are coming at the federal level – you don’t subpoena a former vice president in a high-profile criminal case unless and until prosecutions are likely — and they are coming at the state level here in Georgia. At least, I think so. That prediction is not based on leaks. To […]

COMMENTARY

Bookman: Newt Gingrich is father of today’s compromise-is-surrender GOP politics

By: - February 3, 2023

In an NBC News poll last month, just 23% of Americans said they believe the country is headed in the right direction. Among Republicans, just 7% liked the way things are going. (Among Democrats it was 41%.) In any country with such deep discontent within a major faction, this one included, it shouldn’t be a […]

COMMENTARY

If Georgia GOP thinks life starts at conception, why allow ‘murder’ for six weeks?

By: - January 22, 2023

If you honestly, sincerely believe that human life begins at the moment that sperm is introduced to egg, certain conclusions flow logically from that starting point, including that abortion is murder and that banning abortion is a moral obligation on a par with banning slavery. I strongly disagree with that approach, but I understand it, […]

COMMENTARY

Georgia’s gift to Trump is a lump of coal in stocking

By: - December 18, 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 […]