Most of the government is idle and the nation’s capital is shrouded in nearly a foot of snow with more on the way, but politics, the capital’s only industry, grinds on at a quickening pace. Over the past few days, two more Democrats have entered the race for president, joining Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. John Delaney of Maryland. These four, gathering press notices while they may, won’t be the last.
A congressperson as the arbiter of national morality, the judge of what’s right and wrong, the earnest scholar of government theology? Who knew? Yet Nancy Pelosi says building a wall on the border is “immoral.” Ours is an age that mocks the values that created America.
Elections have consequences is a maxim that's as true as ever, but it's a maxim that has lost some of its punch in a "can-you-top-this?" culture. The punditry insists, as always, that every election is the most important one of everybody's lifetime. It's hyperbole, of course, but it's also true that the 2018 midterms are very, very important. "It's the economy, stupid," is giving way to a maxim waiting for someone to coin: Immigration determines what kind of nation we'll be, and most Americans like the nation we already have.
Who knew so many of the sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome were advanced alcoholics? But some of them have obviously come down with delirium tremens, or D.T.
America's high-tech colossi dominate the globe. Silicon Valley, loosely defined in a mixture of metaphors, is the ultimate Big Rock Candy Mountain. Amazon, Uber, Apple, Microsoft, Lyft, Intel, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Ebay, Twitter, Lyft, were all made in America. Europe's high-tech companies, by contrast, are puny. Only Spotify, a Swedish music-streaming app, makes much of splash globally.
Capital punishment continues to be a hot-button issue nearly everywhere. Several public-opinion polls indicate that state-sanctioned killing is not as popular in America as it once was. Two decades ago polls showed that 80 percent of Americans approved of taking a life for a life, though some approved reluctantly. Now approval is down to a considerably smaller majority. There's a spirited movement of conservatives to abolish the death penalty altogether.
Puerto Rico is braced for Alberto, Beryl, Chris and Debby and other named storms, which will be churning out of the Atlantic any day now. The hurricane season is bearing down on us, and bracing is probably all the island can count on. The local government's record of hurricane relief does not inspire confidence.
Soldiers who give their "last full measure of devotion," as Abraham Lincoln described death on the battlefield, deserve the highest honor a nation can bestow. The fundamental honor is a dignified burial. That right and honor has been long denied to thousands of men who fell in Korea. North Korea can heal the open wound on the American conscience by finally returning the remains of its long-lost sons.
Eliminating law enforcement on the nation's southern border is a cherished goal of a noisy segment of undetermined size among Democrats. Cooler Democratic heads think it's party suicide, and it wouldn't help the nation, either. But cool heads in the party are scarce. Playing the "I'm crazier than thou" game is more fun.
"April is the cruellest month," wrote T.S. Eliot, the poet, literary critic and aspiring weatherman.
America's high-tech colossi dominate the globe: Amazon, Uber, Apple, Microsoft, Lyft, Intel, Facebook, Google, Instagram, eBay, Twitter, Lyft and others were all made in America. Europe's tech companies, by contrast, are puny. Only Spotify, a Swedish music-streaming app, has made much of splash globally.
Mitt Romney coined the term "self-deportation" in 2012 to describe his plan for stemming the flood of illegal immigrants pouring over the border. If illegals couldn't get jobs here because they have no documentation, they would decide to go home.
Ours is not an age for reflection, patience and slow-dancing. Our age demands instant gratification. Sooner than that, if possible. Thus the slow-dancing in the latest exchange since the famous Singapore handshake, originating in a hand-carried letter to Pyongyang. The response came back in another hand-carried letter, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continuing as postman.
Baseball is the reason God made summer. Summer stretches out with the solace and symmetry of a long fly ball to deep center field, climbing ever higher and hanging in the sky as if the afternoon could go on forever. Whether watching a ball game from a box seat on the third-base line or through a hole in the right-field fence, we could only wish it would.
The most depressing thing about Donald Trump's astonishing cuddle-up with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki is that it reveals how small the president's mastery of history and power politics. Worse, he does not hear the minor chords in the music of America, a gift most Americans acquire in the womb.
'Bias" isn't complicated, and recognizing it is so easy a child can see it, and usually does. Every parent discovers this. If bias and the appearance of bias were persons, they would be identical twins whose mother couldn't tell them apart. Though usually personae non grata in law enforcement, these twins palled around with key players in the investigations of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. So, too, the inquiry into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified emails, and it fueled hatred for one and affection for the other. There won't be a satisfactory explanation for the sordid behavior of the Justice Department and its subsidiary, the FBI, until the curious decision that exonerated Mrs. Clinton and targeted Mr. Trump is explained, and in full.
Gershwin got it right: "Summertime, and the livin' is easy, the fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high." It's the season for sitting on the bank of the creek with a fishing pole and letting life come to you. But sometimes those fish aren't biting, and the flies and mosquitos are. The dog days are soon upon us, and the grumblers will be wondering where to get a peaceful, easy feelin'. It's the summer of our malcontents.
President Trump knows how to make a point by showing up late for a meeting. He arrived 30 minutes late Thursday at a session of the NATO summit, missed scheduled meetings with two world leaders, and talked to reporters for an unscheduled 35 minutes and then flew off to London for greater opportunities for tardiness.
Donald Trump says he wants excellence and higher productivity in government and you might think liberals, always eager to expand the work of government, would stand up and applaud. But there's not even the sound of one hand clapping. The reaction of the "progressives" to attempt to modernize civil service rules that monitor the hiring and firing of federal workers — reforms that could start taking place this week — has been a mixture of one part fear and two parts loathing.
Six Catholics, three Jews, three women, five conservatives and four liberals. Not a Protestant, man or woman, anywhere in sight. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court might count more true-blue Roman Catholics than the College of Cardinals in Rome. Diversity, thy name is John Roberts.
Perhaps it's no longer a matter of if, but of when, and under what circumstances, Theresa May's career as prime minster comes to a humiliating end in Britain. The resignations of David Davis, the cabinet minister overseeing Brexit, and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, within a day of one another have seen to that. The only remaining question is, now what?
George Washington, who saw at first hand the limitations of surmise, conjecture and theory, nailed it. "Reason and experience," he said, "both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
