The Republicans in the House finally did what they said they wanted to come to Washington to do. They voted Thursday to repeal Obamacare, but by the slimmest of margins. Speaker Paul D. Ryan needed 216 votes and he turned out 217.
There was a broken heart for every wine glass and beer bottle at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, where the White House Correspondents Association dined at their slimmed-down annual imitation of Hollywood glitz, grandeur and glamour.
The only thing anyone is allowed to hear on campus is a slogan. Thinking is so 20th century (and early 20th century at that). The adults paid to be in charge have retreated to a safe place, where never is heard an encouraging word and the skies are cloudy all day.
The French easily embrace contradiction and chaos. It's what makes their politics work: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," and they said it first: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." The Sunday national election in France proved it again.
The famous bimbo eruptions are back (as if they had ever really gone away), and for once Bubba appears to be in the clear. No new accusations of rude behavior have been lodged against him.
The ever-cranky courts of law keep getting in the way of this Easter season's record-setting Festival of Death in Arkansas.
If chaos is the sign of growth -- and sometimes that's a fair description of progress -- Donald Trump is on course to build an administration that can survive the fits, starts and mistakes of a drawn-out opening night.
The peasants are excused if they think nobody knows what's he's doing. Mr. Nobody can't help noticing that the world seems to be careening to a destination we know not where.
Just about the time the fever on the nut left seems to be subsiding there's another outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Normal-looking folk who sound like they escaped a Marx Bros. movie fall into a relapse.
Kim Jong-un may be "a crazy fat kid" with a goofy haircut, but he is doing what his father and his grandfather never could. With nuclear weapons to play with, he frightens the West enough to make it start thinking about doing something about the most dangerous crazy fat kid on earth.
The Gorsuch nomination finally gets a vote next week, first when the Senate Judiciary Committee approves the nomination and recommends that the Senate follow with confirmation.
Politics is serious business in Washington. Detroit is puzzling over how to make SUVs bigger. Hollywood is worried over how a screenwriters' strike will curtail production of tinsel in Hollywood.
Neil Gorsuch took the best shots, such as they were, of disheartened, dismayed and despondent Democrats this week, and nobody laid a glove on him. He was as fresh when it was over as when the slugging, such as it was, began.
James Comey, the director of the FBI, continues to act like a jerk for every season. The man who first tried to save Hillary Clinton's campaign, and then tried to wreck it at the eleventh hour, reprised his familiar tap dance Monday with Congress. It's getting stale.
A president's budget has the shelf life of a shrimp. A president drafts a budget and sells it with language as chaste and extravagant as the blue sky, and his naysayers dutifully mount their soap boxes to declaim, distort and denounce.
Paranoia is suddenly what's for dinner in Washington. The most fervent patriot can be a spy and never know it until someone posts a video of the high crime and misdemeanor of someone shaking a Russian hand.
Marriages, friendships and business relationships have been thrown at risk in the boiling political culture, where emotion replaces reason and millions of Americans won't have anything to do with someone with a different political opinion.
Some of our grown-ups are missing, just when we need them most, and our Democratic friends need more powerful meds. The ink on the streets of Washington is knee-deep and toxic.
Benjamin Franklin has been trying for years to give the Republicans needed advice from the grave, and they never listen. "We must indeed all hang together," Franklin told his fellow conspirators in Philadelphia, "or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Guess who's not coming to dinner, and probably a good thing, too. Neither Donald Trump nor the not so loyal opposition can be trusted to sup together without sharp elbows, sneers and insults. Before the second bottle of wine is uncorked, the hard rolls (and most years the rolls are really hard) would be flying across the tables.
