I remember when I was in fifth grade and kept losing tennis matches to a kid I despised. After one match I slammed down my racket and fumed to my mother that my nemesis was a really terrible tennis player. She brought me back down to earth by placing her hands on my shoulders, looking […]
Tag Archives: US government
The Times Rides to Mueller’s Rescue
What caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016, which evolved into the criminal investigation that is said today to imperil the Trump presidency? As James Comey’s FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have, for 18 months, failed to prove Donald Trump’s “collusion” with the Kremlin, what was […]
1 Year in Office: Trump Keeps Defying His Critics
Since the day Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, the Dow Jones industrial average has risen by some 35 percent, making the last 14 months one of the greatest bull market runs in history. Some $6 trillion of wealth has been created for Americans — which is very good news for the 55 […]
Trying to Take Trump Seriously
2016 turned out to be a year in which it was wise to take Donald Trump as a political candidate seriously but not literally, in the inspired words of syndicated columnist Salena Zito. As 2017 is on the point of vanishing, it’s worth asking whether it’s time to take Trump seriously, if not literally, as […]
The Year of Media Freakouts
The year 2017 unfolded into a massive surprise to liberals, who fully expected that before Christmas we would (a) all die in a nuclear war over President Donald Trump’s tweets or (b) be swearing in President Mike Pence after Trump was impeached or petulantly quit because the news media was full of meanies. More than […]
Cultural Winners and Losers of 2017
The first year of President Trump stirred the makers of popular culture into a frenzy of resistance. Any list of the year’s cultural winners and losers revolves around how the entertainment elites offended Americans in the red states by trying too hard to correct their outdated patriotism and other traditional values. Loser: the National Football […]
What Are Our Representatives Supposed to Do?
During America’s founding era, a significant debate took place about the nature of representation in a democratically elected government. Were representatives supposed to act as simple proxies for their constituents? Or were they supposed to exercise independent judgment? Edmund Burke was a forceful advocate for the latter position: A representative, he said, was supposed to […]