A piece of land in Louisiana has been designated by the federal government as a critical habitat for a rare frog, although the dusky gopher frog does not live there, and never has. Nevertheless, frog trouble might be ahead for human people who do.
Hurricane Florence hurled furious wind and drenching rain on the Carolinas, but it was the water that fell on saturated ground that caused epic destruction. As the overflowing rivers, streams and estuaries recede homeowners are deluging insurance agents with pleas for a check large enough to cover clean-up and repairs.
Suspicion as deep and wide as the Potomac River is flowing through the corridors of power in Washington. Set loose by hardened opponents of President Trump with charge and countercharge about suspected collusion with Russians bent on cooking an American election, it threatens to swamp the swamp, if that's possible, and drown us all in endless acrimony.
If Donald Trump has the kryptonite powers of Superman that both his friends and enemies think he has (and who are we to say he doesn't?), kryptonite power #1 is his ability to absorb limitless drama and energy from an attack and send it back at his attacker in bursts of invective from both mouth and thumbs.
Summer isn't what it used to be. Almost nothing is. But with the dying of the happiest season we return refreshed to the demands of job, family and community. Labor Day has come and gone and Americans are stepping back into the harness of duty. The advent of autumn kicks off the midterm election season, and with that comes forecasts, if not actual answers to how the national mood will determine success for Republican and Democrat.
For more than a year, President Trump raged at "the deep state" which he believed was arrayed against him, a cabal of highly placed men and women within the federal government, many of them holdover remnants of the Obama administration, working to destroy him and his agenda by any means necessary.
Americans love villains, or at least love to hate them. Darth Vader beating up on dashing Luke Skywalker and Lord Voldemort scaring the innocent young Harry Potter are the stuff of tales that affirm the triumph of good over evil. When the script is flipped and the anti-hero prevails, audiences boo, hiss and jeer. So, too, there's hissing at Nike's attempt to transform Colin Kaepernick, the league's bad boy, into Sergeant York. Americans aren't buying it.
The Democrats, notably including the editors of The New York Times, have decided that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings are but a charade, and they're right for once. But they're right, alas, for the wrong reasons.
Impeachment is the Democratic daydream, but most senior Democrats, who have been in Washington long enough to know how things actually work, are holding their tongues. If they cry impeachment now, with nothing more legally substantial than a wish and the dream, they only encourage Republicans to rally for November. Without control of the House, impeachment, which requires only a majority vote to indict, is unlikely. Without firm control of the Senate, conviction, which requires a three-fourths majority, is virtually impossible.
If Bill Clinton is regarded as one of the most astute of the Democrats — he survived impeachment and a credible accusation of rape — Chairman Eric Bauman of the California Democratic Party is a pol with a lot to learn.
Clever marketing is as important to selling a political candidate as selling a laxative or a Lexus. Bill Clinton and the Democrats insisted a generation ago they wanted abortion to be "legal, safe and rare?"
Donald Trump has held any number of positions on just about everything — abortion, single-payer health care, even illegal immigration. Now governing as a rock-ribbed conservative, Mr. Trump took a circuitous path to his current ideological home.
No one asks to be born. Yet the dawning of self-realization brings the inescapable challenge to make the best of life. Many "kill it," figuratively speaking, surmounting the hurdles and making their time on earth a blessing to themselves and to their fellow men (and women, too, if it's really necessary to say it). Most people manage to live graciously and seal their achievements to the gratitude of family and friends.
Playing God, even online, is not as easy as it looks. Facebook, Twitter and the other technology firms in control of the social-media universe are learning that with nearly limitless power comes the responsibility to administer it fairly. So far social media has failed. Bias, mostly but not all left-leaning, has obstructed the free flow of dialogue. Unless the tech giants figure out how to remedy their tendency to mediate political discourse by leaning left, the bloom will fade from the unmatched flower of human connectivity, and bad things will follow.
Heroism on the battlefield is the ultimate tribute man can pay to those whom he loves, and above all to his country. But such heroism is not limited to the actual fields where sword flashes against sword.
