Columns

Democrats’ votes come from center

Recent elections give the lie to the notion that America wants fiery liberal activists to run the country -- an idea put forth mainly by fiery liberal activists. It turns out that even Democrats don’t necessarily want them.

Consider a recent House primary race in Illinois. If there is any Democrat a liberal might want to see the last of, it’s Chicagoarea Rep. Dan Lipinski. Lipinski voted against the Affordable Care Act because of the mandate requiring employers to cover birth control. (Let the record show that he’s since opposed Republican efforts to kill Obamacare.)

The dukes-out of hazard

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden gave Donald Trump a gift last week when he engaged the president of the United States in a verbal slugfest, saying that if the two men were in high school, he’d take Trump out back and teach him a lesson.

Biden was clearly kidding, speaking off-the-cuff about Trump’s alleged mistreatment of women.

But Trump, never one to let an insult pass — and always eager to deflect attention from the chaos engulfing him — responded in kind.

And now there are 3

Syndicated columnist

Stormy Daniels is ready for her close-up -- which is to say, her appearance on “60 Minutes.” In New York, Summer Zervos is moving forward with her defamation suit against the president for calling her a liar and saying he was going to sue her for accusing him of sexually assaulting her, an accusation she made shortly before the election. And now former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal seeks to void her nondisclosure agreement with a tabloid so she can finally tell her story, too.

Stop making children into moral authorities

Syndicated columnist

On March 14, high school students from Parkland, Florida, led a school walkout in favor of gun control. The media have already appointed student witnesses of the horror at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School untouchable moral authorities; their opinions are not to be questioned.

Climate exit

Syndicated columnist

President Trump’s pick to be the new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is not a fan of the Paris climate agreement, the treaty that claims it will slow global warning by reducing the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Politicians from most of the world’s nations signed the deal, and President Obama said “we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.”

That’s dubious.

Trump wisely said he will pull America out of the deal. He called it a “massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.”

We are not globalists, we are Americans

WASHINGTON — At one haunted moment in American history — early in 1939, not long after Kristallnacht — Senator Robert Wagner, D-N.Y., and Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers, R-Mass., introduced a bill that would have allowed 20,000 unaccompanied Jewish refugee children into the United States. Opponents argued that Congress should focus on the welfare of American children, and that German refugees were a Trojan horse. “Twenty thousand charming children,” said President Franklin Roosevelt’s cousin, “would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.”

Why women need the right to choose

Syndicated columnist

WASHINGTON — Cathy McMorris Rodgers serves as chair of the House Republican Conference, which puts her in charge of the congressional GOP’s messaging. McMorris Rodgers is also the proud mother of a 10-year-old who has Down syndrome, which makes it unsurprising that McMorris Rodgers directed an unhappy message my way after a column about state legislation to prohibit abortions for fetuses with Down syndrome.

Trump’s believe it or not

Syndicated columnist

WASHINGTON — In a rare expression of selfawareness, President Trump admitted — nay, boasted — that he just makes stuff up.

Recounting a recent meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump says Trudeau told him that the U.S. has no trade deficit with Canada, whereupon Trump essentially said, Yes, we do, whereupon Trudeau said, No you don’t.

Until Democrats come to grips with why Hillary lost, Trump will keep winning

Last weekend, Hillary Clinton spoke in India. There, she continued to struggle publicly with the most humiliating experience of her life, not her husband’s continual sexual misconduct or her State Department’s mishandling of Benghazi but her loss of the presidency to a reality television show host. Hillary’s not over it. And she never will be.

It’s not easy living close to beavers

For 30 years, Susan Sherosick has lived in uneasy proximity to beavers. The tireless rodents routinely fell the cottonwoods that line her 32 acres in southwest Oregon and dam her creeks into wetlands. Twice, she has asked the county to send a trapper, though she tries to leave the animals alone. But when new dams flooded her house this winter, she again drew the line.

“Pretty soon I couldn’t flush the toilet,” she told me. “It was like living in a marsh.”