In the era of social media — where videos gone “viral” are the currency of the realm — hyper-partisanship, and, dare we say, symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome everywhere, political harassment is in vogue. Trump administration officials are routinely heckled and harassed in public places, like restaurants. This obnoxious behavior is corrosive of our democratic society. Political differences here are supposed to be debated, discussed and ultimately voted on. Public harassment has no place in an open society.
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Some on the left are angry, if not apoplectic, that conservatives are turning the tables on them and co-opting one of their own tactics against liberal policies. But turnabout, as they say, is fair play: Self-styled “progressives,” it seems, aren’t the only ones who can unilaterally decide which laws they will or will not enforce and/or comply with.
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This is the season when presidential candidates are learning that running for president isn't as easy as they thought it would be. This is the time to start looking for something to rescue a faltering campaign. Sen. Kamala Harris is trying to lift hers with an ambitious scheme to narrow the gender pay gap, the difference between the earnings of men and women. Companies with even a 1 percent gap between the two sexes could be fined under her scheme.
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Political trends, like the common cold, are contagious. Revolutions are often not confined to one country. The Communist revolution in Russia soon spread across the first half of the 20th century. The rise of fascism occurred in tandem across wide swaths of the world.
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When the winds of change begin to blow, it's hard to predict where the consequences will settle. The migrant masses congregating at the borders have gone airborne, threatening to overfly President Trump and his proposal for orderly immigration that preserves national sovereignty. The immigration chaos is undeniably a crisis, and the government's idea for spreading the chaos by air threatens to make the crisis impossible to contain.
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America is once more open for business. With the Trump administration's emphasis on tax reduction, elimination of overbearing and unnecessary regulations, job creation has put a fire under the economy. The result is a steady increase in the U.S. gross domestic product.
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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.
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"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.
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"To everything there is a season," the Good Book counsels, and for diehard critics of Donald Trump, clinging to their belief in his sinister designs, it's always open season on the president. To "a time to be born, a time to die" they have added "a time to accuse, a time to face accusation." For the president's adversaries, that time has arrived.
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Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 on a platform with two main planks. He promised to secure the nation's southern border and preserve the United States as a sovereign power, one with the unquestioned right to determine who enters and who doesn't. That is still a work in progress, with no help from Democrats and some establishment Republicans and their allies in big business.
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Politics is a lot like baseball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The difference is that if you lose, "there's no crying in baseball," as Tom Hanks reminded his ladies of the diamond in the movie "A League of Their Own." In baseball, you're supposed to hitch up your pants and move on to the next town, the next day and the next game. In politics you're allowed a few tears, and the Democrats know how to turn on the waterworks.
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The two most obstreperous children in the "family" of nations are at it again, rattling sabers as if in unison. Iran's furtive provocations in the Persian Gulf are roiling the Middle East and North Korea's resumption of missile testing is once more putting Asia on edge. America's responses are distinctly different, because the Islamic state's hostility is uniformly implacable, and the flame of reconciliation still flickers within the Hermit Kingdom. Where there's light, there's hope.
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A president who talks and acts tough on trade has been a long time coming. Donald Trump made getting fair dealing on trade a major plank in his campaign platform and has followed through. China can't say it wasn't warned about the imposition this week of additional tariffs on selected goods coming into the United States.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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