Almost all of the economic discussion of late has been on the "wage gap" between men and women. A case in point: California Sen. Kamala Harris wants to create a federal bureaucracy that will ensure the government has more influence over workers' pay than workers and employers themselves. This will open up a Pandora's box for trial lawyers as employers find themselves deluged with lawsuits over pay "gaps" real and imagined.
For a president who won his office by denouncing the Middle East wars into which George W. Bush and Barack Obama plunged the nation, Donald Trump has assembled the most unabashedly hawkish conclave of foreign policy advisers in memory. And he himself seems to concede the point.
Political parties generally go unappreciated, even among those inclined to celebrate representative democracy. The Founding Fathers famously didn't like them yet found themselves forming them, not long after the First Congress assembled.
What is it about special counsel Robert Mueller that he cannot say clearly and concisely what he means?
A week before Rep. Joe Crowley decisively lost his primary last year, I tweeted about Crowley’s potential vulnerability, with the caveat that “I have little idea if Rep. Joe Crowley (D, NY-14) is actually seriously threatened by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in his primary next week.” A member of Crowley’s staff sent me an email that quoted this question I raised and said, “He's not. Not at all.”
If you are not a member of the Democrats' protected class of bitter loudmouths who hate America, you can be investigated and prosecuted for marriage fraud. The headlines have been filled with recent crackdowns.
Hillary Clinton called them "the deplorables." Barack Obama called them losers who "cling" to their Bibles, bigotries and guns.
"I don't feel safe," says a Harvard student in a video.
There's no question that many farmers are struggling this year with incomes down and bankruptcies up. Though some of the more dire reports on the farm sector recorded in the media are exaggerated, what is indisputable is that prices for major commodities such as corn are on a downward trend and are significantly lower than they were less than a decade ago, when prices were at or near record highs.
As one of the few pundits who correctly called the 2016 election for Donald Trump, it would be wise to rest on my laurels rather than risk another prediction, one that might turn out wrong.
The Big Lie is back in style. Wikipedia tells us that the term was invented by Adolf Hitler to describe what others did -- though he was the biggest liar of all. "The broad masses of a nation," he wrote in "Mein Kampf," "more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie."
After a stroke felled Woodrow Wilson during his national tour to save his League of Nations, an old rival, Sen. Albert Fall, went to the White House to tell the president, "I have been praying for you, Sir."
GOP remains favored to hold the majority overall.
— Senate retirements are not having a dramatic effect on the partisan odds in any race so far.
— Democrats have missed on some Senate recruits, and that may (or may not) matter in the long run.
— Alabama and Colorado remain the likeliest states to flip, with the Democratic-held Yellowhammer State the likeliest of all.
— Arizona is the purest Toss-up.
— Republicans remain favored overall.
Look at the dollar bills in your wallet. They say they are "legal tender for all debts."
We no longer live in a constitutional republic. We live in an idiocracy.
Only in modern-day America, under the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, is the basic proposition that federally subsidized public housing should benefit American citizens and legal residents slammed as "despicable" and "damaging."
When I used to talk to candidate Donald Trump about immigration, I would tell him, Make sure your "big, beautiful wall" has plenty of gates for people to come here legally. President Trump's new immigration initiative would achieve both goals -- border security and a new system to admit the immigrants America needs most.
A week from today, Europeans may be able to gauge how high the tide of populism and nationalism has risen within their countries and on their continent.
Journalism is in trouble. Writers of articles pointing this out typically argue that this is really bad for democracy or America or whatever. Anyone who disagrees is too stupid to read this, so I won't bother to repeat this obviousness. Such writers also point out contemporaneous evidence of the media apocalypse; here are the three I came across this week:
Speaking on state TV of the prospect of a war in the Gulf, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei seemed to dismiss the idea.
"There won't be any war. ... We don't seek a war, and (the Americans) don't either. They know it's not in their interests."
If you've been paying any attention at all to journalism in recent years -- maybe not a good idea, but if you have -- you surely have noticed those stories predicting, often with a certain relish, that the United States is about to become a majority-minority country.
