American Public Television announced this month that it was resurrecting (literally and figuratively) “The McLaughlin Group,” but you don’t need to be a political pundit — or even play one on TV — to understand why Sen. Doug Jones has been designated the most-endangered of the 34 Senate incumbents up for election in 2020.
Credit the comedian and HBO talk show host Bill Maher for being blunt. He has a gift for making text what is otherwise subtext.
The G-20 summit opens Friday to address issues important to the global economy, but for President Trump the world is not enough. He has special business on the side that could be more pivotal than the gathering's broad agenda. From China to Russia to Iran to the Koreas, the president's dealmaker checklist could boost or break his momentum as he prepares to meet the field of Democratic presidential contenders head-on.
For much of the 19th and early-20th centuries, the state of Illinois was a powerful magnet. Between 1850 and 1900, the state's population grew five-fold, from 850,000 to more than 4.8 million. Some of that growth was attributable to natural population increase — big families were the rule then — but population growth was supercharged by both domestic and international migration.
Tough words softened by gentle deeds are preferable to gentle words trampled by rough and reckless action. President Trump vows to begin deporting illegal immigrants by the millions, a campaign promise that helped elect him and may well do so again. He didn't invent the chaos on the border, but he is the first president to try to do something about it. The nation yearns for an equitable immigration system that enables the orderly entry of foreign nationals without infringing the rights of law-abiding Americans. There's nothing in the president's words or deeds that dash that wish.
Forty-nine soldiers from "the Great War," as World War I was once known, can now "requiescat in pace." The people of Prince George's County, Maryland, can rest in peace, too. The U.S. Supreme Court liberated the Peace Cross in Bladensburg this week from the anger of vandals who wanted to evict the 40-foot-tall cross from its place of honor on a traffic roundabout, where it has commemorated the "valor, endurance, courage and devotion" of the heroic dead for nearly a century.
President Trump is accused by his critics, enemies and assorted soreheads of being the most divisive president since, well, maybe Chester Alan Arthur, or somebody. Perhaps he is, but much of the record of his first three years suggests that sometimes divisiveness works. He puts on a good show, too. His opening rally this week in Orlando, Florida, was a raucous whopper.
There are eternal debates about issues that, while seeming adjudicated and settled, nonetheless bubble up every few years: Should Pete Rose be in the baseball Hall of Fame? Who killed John F. Kennedy? Should there be a constitutional amendment proscribing the burning of the American flag?
A threat to the global oil supply imperils the global economy. Iran's menacing behavior toward oil shipments moving past its shores is just such a threat. The community of nations cringes at the notion of the United States acting as the world's policeman. The American people do, too. But when conflict erupts on the high seas, as on land, who but the Americans are expected to do something about it.
Americans are more security-conscious than ever. Whether it's the triggered response of a generation jolted from well-being by the terrorist attacks of September 11, or a natural result of urbanization that is characterized by living cheek to jowl, the yearning for what the college kids call "safe space" is growing.
Elaine Chao, the secretary of Transportation, is one of the most accomplished members of President Trump's administration. She has led two Cabinet agencies, been a sub-cabinet official, a leader of an influential think tank, and a vital force for the cheerful conservatism grounded in the hard work and traditional values that made Ronald Reagan so popular with so many Americans.
Hong Kong is the pebble in China's shoe. The Beijing government didn't try to swallow Hong Kong whole when the British gave up the ghost, and the colony, in 1997. The Beijing government, which seems to have a low opinion of its constituents, promotes the line that Chinese people are incapable of democratic government and they are not capable of the rule of law and consequently are not due the liberties and freedoms common in the West.
Joe Biden has held a consistent, if consistently incoherent, position on abortion for decades. Singing from the same hymnal as many other Roman Catholic Democrats, the onetime U.S. senator for Delaware and vice president of the United States, professes that for religious reasons he is "personally" opposed to abortion. Yet — and here's the twist — he does not want to prohibit the procedure. "My position is that I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don't think I have a right to impose my view on the rest of society," he put it in his memoir, "Promises to Keep," in 2007.
Some memories, especially painful ones, have the power to bring the past back to life with the clarity of a pointed dagger. That's why House Democrats dusted off the figure of John Dean, the Watergate whistle-blower, and set him before the American public. In their relentless campaign to destroy Donald Trump and his presidency, they reckoned that Mr. Dean would demonstrate a link between the Donald and Tricky Dick. In the event it was a bridge to nowhere. The novelist Thomas Wolfe said it best: "You can't go home again."
Inventiveness plus boldness equals progress. Liberal "activists" who want to revolutionize the nation's energy resources demonstrate political moxie, but if their campaign to substitute renewable sources for fossil fuels — oil and gas — succeeds it will take more than happy thoughts to keep the lights on.
Dealing with misleading truisms is part of life, but so is refusing to accept what fate has supposedly decreed. It's a sad fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been crossways with the United States and the West for 40 years. But we're entitled to hope that the past is not a prologue to the future this time.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has updated the old adage, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." She says "if you can't impeach him, jail him."
Not everyone gets to save the world. Before the colors of the Sixth of June 1944 fade into the mists of time, we remember after the passage of 75 years the uncommon sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers of America, of Britain and Canada.
Summer approaches, and a gloomy pall, some of it manufactured and some of it real, casts a shadow over the land of the free.
President Trump is fond of tariffs, seeing them as both a means and an end.
The Republicans really, really don't want Roy Moore to run again for the U.S. Senate. He might be the only politician in Alabama more unpopular than Doug Jones, the Democratic incumbent, but he could scramble a primary and might open a way for Mr. Jones to win another term. Republicans know they have to be careful in dealing with Roy Moore. Voters don't like it when outsiders meddle, even if they're friendly outsiders.
Every decade produces a new drug to terrorize the mean streets, the family hearth and especially threatens the young. Heroin was the scourge of the '70s. Cocaine scourged the '80s and crack was the nightmare of the '90s, hitting hardest those trying to survive on the margins and who would mortgage the future for a brief escape from misery. To be sure, these drugs have been with man for centuries, but they have returned to modern times with a vengeance.
