A wake-up call for the sleeping beauties
The midterm congressional election campaigns are about to be upon us. Labor Day is when campaigns get serious, and this year we still don't have a name for the Nov. 6 elections.
Pruden on Politics
Related Articles
Creative writing about Mr. Trump's troubles
Donald Trump's critics have made a wonderful contribution to our golden age of letters. But who could have guessed that this glorious abundance of creative writing would be found in political commentary?
The derangement virus stalks the land
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) rarely kills, but it wounds, and it might be fatal to the Democratic crusade to take back the House.
The noisy clashing dreams of 2020
Even fake news has its standards, and fake news has its fans, depending on who the faker may be. A faker should not be confused with a fakir, a wandering Hindu holy man or sometimes a Muslim beggar of alms. They're all just trying to make a living.
Making sport calling out 'them lyin' newspapers
Calling out "them lyin' newspapers" has been standard stump speech since the first cave-man candidate invited the mob to start chunking rocks at the village blowhard. The chunking was such fun the custom survives.
Walking too close to the Donald
Patience is a Christian virtue, and no one has to cultivate patience like an evangelical Christian trying to be patient with Donald Trump.
Mainstream media are awash in a tsunami of trivia
The media is guilty of manifold sins, as God and everyone else know, but President Trump has misdiagnosed what's wrong with the media. It's not deliberate "fakery," but a tsunami of too much news badly edited, if edited at all. We're awash in information, much of it show-biz trivia that we don't need.
Stumbling into hellfire in Helsinki
How does Donald Trump test the patience, forbearance, loyalty and endurance of the millions who trusted him to drain the swamp, restore a strong American voice in the world, cast out evil-doers and deliver America from the clutch of those who would trash the dream? Let us count the ways.
This is no NATO for deadbeats
The Europeans wrote the book on how to be successful deadbeats. We got another demonstration of that at the NATO summit this week in Brussels. Some of the chief practitioners of the art of welshing on a debt take a fulsome pride in their deadbeat pedigree.
There's life in Old Blighty yet
The good ol' boys, if there were any in Old Blighty, could tell Theresa May how and why she finds herself in such a mess in London, with a Brexit disaster only inches away: "You always go home with the one who brung you to the dance." This is folk wisdom every conscientious mother should impart to her daughter, early and often.
Making book on a sure thing
I've got your judge right here: Gentlemen, place your bets. I've got Brett Kavanaugh at 5 to 2, Amy Coney Barrett at 4 to 1, and coming up fast on the inside, Ray Kethledge at 8 to 3. Kavanaugh has been on a bit of a fade, Miss Amy is holding steady over the past 24 hours, and some smart money is trending toward Kethledge. Looks like a down to the wire race.
The inevitable search for the litmus test
Litmus test, litmus test, who's got a litmus test? Well, apparently just about every senator on the left. A litmus test -- a standard beyond which one won't go, like Barack Obama's famous red line in Syria -- was once derided as the mark of a rigid mind. Now that the independent mind has gone out of style, everybody wants to impose a litmus test.
The Democrats flirt with an old fantasy
Nobody has ever proved that Andy Warhol said "in the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."
Barking mad and proud of it
Bonnie and Clyde sometimes called themselves "bank inspectors," but they were only kidding. The Palestinian Authority, the famous terrorist collective pretending to be a nation, collects $350 million from the U.S. Treasury every year to pay "salaries" to imprisoned terrorists, make love offerings to families of dead terrorists, celebrate terrorists as heroes, build monuments to dead criminals, and other bad things. And that's no joke.
Democrats in a lather over the good news
Barack Obama is miffed because he thinks he collected the tinder for a booming economy, and events ignited a booming economy and the Donald gets the credit. That's pretty fanciful, as most economists will tell you. But now Mr. Obama can watch with a measure of pleasure as President Trump takes heat for using the Obama example of how to deal with the children brought by their families to the hell on the border.
Is California too much of a good thing?
Cutting Texas down to size is always a good thing to do, and if we have to carve up California to do it, well, that's life. The current popular notion in California would divide the Golden State into three new states, something that could be no longer be called Golden but perhaps Plastic, Pewter and Brass.
Sex, lies and betrayal at the FBI
If Jeff Sessions and Christopher Wray want to clean house at the FBI, they'll be well advised to pack a good lunch. Cleaning this house will be an all-day job. The agency under James B. Comey has been more corrupt than we thought.
The rumble and the thrilla in Singapore
One hand giveth, the other taketh it away. President Trump, arriving in Singapore for his man-to-man with Kim Jong-un is, like nearly everyone else in town, giddy with anticipation.
Panic time at Camp Mueller
If this is June, it must be time to indict Paul Manafort again. The clock is ticking, and the tic-tocs are getting louder.
The gay times roll, but the Supremes stop the music
The Supreme Court can sometimes twist itself into a pretzel to write law. The court on Monday upheld again the Constitutional principle that freedom of speech includes the right not to speak, but it all but apologized for saying so.
