Running for president has replaced baseball as the national pastime. (We liked baseball better.) Every day there’s a new rookie up from South Bend or Cedar Rapids of the Three-Eye League, or an equivalent, armed with his newspaper clippings about his prowess in the minors. (“Good field, no hit.”) As we went to press, 24 Democrats think they can hit major-league pitching. There may be more tomorrow.
“Everybody complains about the weather,” observed Mark Twain, “but no one does anything about it.” That may have been true in his happier day, but not now, when we think man can change anything.
America's lengthy love affair with the automobile is about to be put to the test. Self-driving cars, or as the techno-geeks call them, "highly autonomous vehicles," are revving up to take over the road, and sooner rather than later.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants the attorney general, William Barr, to break the law. That's a curious, if not bizarre wish from a distinguished member of Congress. But Mr. Nadler and the Democrats, who are in a frenzy to salvage something from the collusion investigation they expected to deliver Donald Trump's head on a pike, have demanded the attorney general hand over an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report. That's against the law.
Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination next year has a big job ahead. The Democrats must find a way to repeal the first rule of campaign persuasion. "It's the economy, Stupid."
Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Pete of South Bend, is the rising star of the Democrats this month, Beto having already had his 15 minutes of fame. Mayor Pete and his prospective first lady (sex no longer has anything to do with who's a lady and who's a gent) even made the cover of Time magazine.
The U.S. Commerce Department's blockbuster news, that the economy grew by a stunning 3.2 percent in the first quarter, is good news for everybody unless you're one of the two dozen Democrats running for president. A little bipartisan celebration of the news is in order.
Delirious Democrats, lost in a deep, dark hole of their own making, just can't put their shovels down. They just know that down there somewhere there's the key to ridding themselves of Donald Trump. Robert Mueller's Russia collusion report was a dry hole, but that must be because Attorney General William Barr is keeping the good stuff to himself. So it's back to the shovels.
America is a nation on wheels. With 328 million prospective drivers eager to go about their business, the challenge is to build cars and trucks that meet a complex array of needs. To balance efficiency with costs, safety and environmental preservation, the Trump administration wants to relax fuel efficiency rules. Despite the inevitable obstacles, it's an adjustment that could pay off down the road.
The war in Afghanistan, which was an expensive losing proposition for the Russians, is proving to be an expensive losing proposition for the United States as well. The American struggle to root out terrorism and establish stability in Afghanistan, paid for by American blood and money, is failing.
Democrats can dream of a 50-state strategy, per Howard Dean, but it's only a dream. The South, once the exclusive preserve of Democrats and yellow dogs, is almost solid again, and this time Democrats and yellow dogs have been evicted and the region is red and safely Republican. The Rust Belt, once a Democratic stronghold, voted for Donald Trump, and might again. Bernie Sanders thinks he can fix all that by making the nation's prison population solid for the Democrats.
Presidents from Bill Clinton forward have made bold pledges to fix America's broken health care system. Indeed, the broken system and what to do about it is usually a theme of presidential campaigns. Yet the system is still broken, and government interventions in the medical marketplace have created more problems than they solved.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether the Trump administration can mandate that the U.S. Census, to be taken next year, ask a simple and logical question about who is a citizen and who is not. Regardless of what the court decides, it's a controversy that is not likely to go away.
Nowhere is the intractable misery of the Islamic Middle East and its impact on American interests more evident than in Yemen, an otherwise obscure Arab country on the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula.
This isn't your father's Earth Day. The celebration of all things "green" turns 49 on Monday, and it's starting to show the inevitable signs of age. That might be a good thing. With the passage of the years comes a preference for results over rhetoric. A good way to celebrate the planet's magnificent fauna and flora is simply to keep it clean.
