The Albatross of a Trump Endorsement
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s distinctive rhetorical style — think of a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” under water — poses an almost insuperable challenge to people...
View ArticleThe GOP battle for Michigan
DEARBORN, Mich. — It is here in the industrial Midwest, not in the South, where Ted Cruz’s audacious theory of the 2016 race was supposed to be put to one of its most important tests. Michigan’s...
View ArticleThen Along Came Nancy
WASHINGTON — They were just four words, but they denoted something that led to a wonderful swerve in world history. They were words Ronald Reagan repeatedly used when referring to something that...
View ArticleDonald Trump’s ‘Peak’ Might Be Coming
WASHINGTON — Frequently predicted but never reached, “peak oil” — maximum possible production — has been postponed yet again, this time because of fracking. “Peak Sanders” was prematurely announced...
View ArticleRethinking Crime And Punishment
WASHINGTON — Sen. John Cornyn recalls visiting a Texas prison where some inmates taking shop classes could not read tape measures. Cornyn, who was previously a district court judge and Texas Supreme...
View ArticleThe GOP’s blocking of court pick is indefensible
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party’s incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle. The multiplicity of Republican rationalizations for their...
View ArticleCan Automakers Redefine Mobility Again?
DEARBORN, Mich. — If Mark Fields’ theory is correct, his industry faces novel challenges. His theory about the changing role of driving in Americans’ lives is one reason Ford Motor Co. now describes...
View ArticleWhy The Future Will Disappoint
WASHINGTON — Presidential campaigns incite both hypochondria and euphoria, portraying the present as grimmer than it is and the future as grander than it can be. As an antidote to both, read a rarity,...
View ArticleLibya Debacle Undermines Clinton’s Foreign Policy Credential
WASHINGTON — Republican peculiarities in this political season are so numerous and lurid that insufficient attention is being paid to this: The probable Democratic nominee’s principal credential, her...
View ArticleHow Well Do You Know Your Baseball?
WASHINGTON — Pitcher Jim Bouton said: “Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?” To show how smart you are,...
View ArticleTed Cruz Is Surging By Design
“It’s not the will to win that matters. … It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” — Paul “Bear” Bryant HOUSTON — People here at Ted Cruz’s campaign headquarters are meticulously preparing to win...
View ArticleA battle to save a battlefield
PRINCETON, N.J. — One of history’s most important battles happened here on a field you can walk across in less than half the 45 or so minutes the battle lasted. If George Washington’s audacity on Jan....
View ArticleThe Destructive Threat Of Cyberwarfare
WASHINGTON — There is a consensus that aggression by one nation against another is a serious matter, but there is no comparable consensus about what constitutes aggression. Waging aggressive war was...
View ArticleHistories that Shouldn’t be Secret
WASHINGTON — When President Obama departs for Saudi Arabia, an incubator of the 9/11 attacks, he will leave behind a dispute about government secrecy. The suppression of 28 pages, first from a public...
View ArticleWhat Happens In Puerto Rico Won’t Stay There
Immigrant goes to America, Many hellos in America; Nobody knows in America Puerto Rico’s in America! — “West Side Story” WASHINGTON — Puerto Rico, an awkward legacy of America’s 1898 testosterone...
View ArticleIn Case Of Trump Nomination, Break Glass
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative...
View ArticleThe Misadventures of Fannie and Freddie
WASHINGTON — Gigantic government’s complexity and opacity provide innumerable opportunities for opportunists to act unconstrained by clear law or effective supervision. Today’s example, involving the...
View ArticleWho Will Follow Trump Off The Cliff?
Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Washington Post: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I would say over a period of eight years.” — March 31 Fortune: “You’ve said you...
View ArticleAmtrak Helps Government Ride Off The Rails
WASHINGTON — In 1906, Leonor Loree, an accomplished railroad executive, examined the dilapidated Kansas City Southern Railroad that he had been hired to rehabilitate. Dismayed, he permanently enriched...
View ArticleDue Process Is Being Kicked Off Campus
WASHINGTON — Academia’s descent into perpetual hysteria and incipient tyranny is partly fueled by the fiction that one in five college students is sexually assaulted and that campuses require minute...
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