When Sir Kim Darroch's secret cable to London was leaked to the Daily Mail, wherein he called the Trump administration "dysfunctional ... unpredictable ... faction-riven ... diplomatically clumsy and inept," the odds on his survival as U.K. ambassador plummeted.
Farewell Ross Perot; Senate races on the fringe of the competitive map; the curious case of Justin Amash.
— Ross Perot, who died earlier this week, provided something of a template for Donald Trump. He also was the best-performing third-party presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.
— They are not top-tier races, but there have been noteworthy Senate developments on the outer fringes of the competitive map in Kansas, Kentucky, and Virginia.
— Justin Amash’s decision to leave the GOP creates another House swing seat.
Well, well, well. "Follow the facts," Democratic strategist Christine Pelosi now advises fellow liberals in the wake of billionaire and high-flying political financier Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking indictment this week. Some of "our faves" could be implicated in the long-festering scandal, the Pelosi daughter warned, so it's time to "let the chips fall where they may."
The city of Dunedin, Florida, wants Jim Ficken's home.
Ficken's mom died, so he went to South Carolina to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to look after his house.
In the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Kamala Harris of California defended forced busing back in the 1970s as a civil rights triumph and criticized former Vice President Joe Biden for racial insensitivity for once opposing the policy.
Since the Democratic debates in June, the tide seems to have receded for the party and its presidential hopefuls.
In new polls, only Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump comfortably.
A century ago, newspapers employed more than 2,000 full-time editorial cartoonists. Today, there are fewer than 25. In the United States, political cartooning as we know it is dead. If you draw them for a living and you have any brains, you're working in a different field or looking for an exit.
"Partisan gerrymandering is nothing new," writes Chief Justice John Roberts near the beginning of his opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause. "Nor is frustration with it." The question is what, if anything, federal courts ought to do about it. The answer the chief justice and the four other Republican-appointed justices have endorsed, journalists have been reporting, is nothing.
I will not be in much of a celebratory mood this coming Independence Day.
Happy Fourth of July!
We have reason to celebrate.
The Fourth honors the founding of America. It's the anniversary of the day in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was approved.
The Congressional Budget Office has just released its mid-year update on the federal fiscal situation, and it portends a debt avalanche. But don't bother to tell Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that. They're busy advocating tens of trillions of dollars in new federal spending.
"The liberal idea has become obsolete. ... (Liberals) cannot simply dictate anything to anyone as they have been attempting to do over the recent decades."
Eventually, tech theorist Clay Shirky has argued, so many people will have nude photos on the internet that there will be no shame in one of them being yours. Privacy will no longer be necessary. It will be a halcyon time for politicians: No matter how much dirt your enemies dig up, none of it will stick, because having done bad things and making stupid mistakes will be considered normative.
There's something attractive in the party names in the Supreme Court's decision on the relationship between government and religion: American Legion v. American Humanist Association. Both organizations, the veterans group formed after World War I and the secular humanist group founded the year this nation entered World War II, want to tell you how American they are.
"For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end."
On the first night of the Democratic debates, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a master class in when to speak and when to keep one’s mouth shut. This is a lesson former Vice President Joe Biden could learn a lot from.
Candidate showdowns go back many decades, but have only recently become part of the nomination fabric.
— There have been nearly 200 presidential primary debates since 1948.
— Almost all of them have been held in the last four decades.
— Although Democrats have a record-breaking primary field, they do not appear likely to break the record for the number of candidates appearing on a stage at once, 11, set by Republicans last cycle.
— No incumbent president has participated in a primary debate, and Donald Trump seems likely to continue that trend.
Fun fact: I've been crocheting since I was 10, when my Tita Lisa taught me the magic of granny squares. Fellow yarn nerds will understand the heavenly bliss of spending hours at Hobby Lobby or Walmart immersed in a sea of alpaca, mohair, angora, super bulky and super saver skeins for blankets, baby clothes, hats, headbands, scarves, bookmarks and potholders. (Yes, I've made them all!) I passed on the tradition to my artsy teenage daughter; teaming up on a Christmas afghan for my dad last year was one of my favorite ever projects.
So many people want to be president. Unfortunately, many have terrible ideas.
Several years ago, I had a shoulder injury, and the doctor told me I might need surgery to fix the small tear in my rotator cuff. So, I asked, "Doctor, if I have this surgery, about how much will it cost?"
