Columns

The Democrats and the 1919 World Series

Published on Tue, 07/30/2019 - 4:03pm

WASHINGTON -- Watching Democratic presidential aspirants is like watching, a century ago, the 1919 World Series, when discerning spectators thought: Some of the White Sox are trying to lose. Michael Boskin, chairman of President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, pays the Democrats the injurious compliment of taking seriously their aspirations, which are characterized by a disqualifying flippancy. For example:

A waste of Mueller’s time

Published on Mon, 07/29/2019 - 3:37pm

WASHINGTON — The picture that spoke far more words than former special counsel Robert Mueller uttered during last week’s hearings was taken by renowned photographer David Hume Kennerly.

The close-up of Mueller’s face was a portrait of rare depth, the sort one is more likely to find on a Leonardo da Vinci canvas with all its shadows, hollows and his soulful, nearly weeping eyes. I found myself thinking of paintings of the Agony in the Garden, showing Jesus’ upturned face as he prayed. No doubt, Mueller, too, was praying that this all would soon be over.

Why the left is reconsidering Al Franken

Published on Fri, 07/26/2019 - 4:15pm

 On Monday, The New Yorker printed a lengthy piece by reporter Jane Mayer about the sad fate of former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. Franken resigned from the Senate in 2017 after a bevy of women accused him of sexual harassment; their accounts ranged from unwanted kisses to unsolicited a— grabbing. In the midst of the #MeToo movement, Franken stepped down, all the while decrying President Trump’s own record of allegations concerning mistreatment of women.

Justice Stevens

Published on Fri, 07/26/2019 - 4:14pm

I was blessed. 

On my first day as his law clerk on the D.C. Circuit, Judge J. Skelly Wright, who had hired me sight unseen when I was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, told me that Justice Brennan would not do the same. True, he always hired Judge Wright’s Harvard clerk sight unseen, and he had never passed on a Harvard Law Review president. But they were all men. It was nothing personal, the judge informed me; he just didn’t hire women.

An alternative path forward in Montana’s Crazy Mountains

Published on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 4:51pm

Like many Montanans, the Crazy Mountains holds special significance to our family. Back in his early twenties, my husband maintained trails and repaired fences in the Crazies as part of a hitch in the Montana Conservation Corps. He took me on a hunting trip to the Ibex cabin when we were pregnant with our first daughter — I was hooked. Whether backpacking, biking, skiing or just out for a day hike, I love spending time in the backcountry with my family in this stunning island range. 

Plant a tree, hug a bee

Published on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 4:49pm

WASHINGTON — Sometimes big problems can be solved simply.

At the moment, our biggest problem — climate change — can be ended by simply planting trees. OK, so a trillion trees, according to a Swiss study published earlier this month in the journal Science. But how hard is that, really?

Democrats, send the wonks home

Published on Tue, 07/23/2019 - 4:49pm

Wonks can be useful people. Having studied the deep innards of public policy, wonks are essential to constructing programs that can function as desired. They help write complicated laws. But whereas wonks may know all the parts that make a clock work, they are usually not good at selling the clock. You need marketers for that. 

Politicians are the marketers. They tell ordinary people what’s great about their proposals. When they have to drag a wonk onto the stage to explain something — or have to play the wonk themselves — they’re in trouble. 

Republican leaders are shilling for a bigot

Published on Tue, 07/23/2019 - 4:46pm

WASHINGTON — American politics is now caught in an odd and dangerous form of escalation.

The color of her skin

Published on Mon, 07/22/2019 - 4:30pm

WASHINGTON — Going out on a limb here: Donald Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things.

Not to name call or anything.

And all of those observable facts seem to sit quite well with his base of supporters, most Republicans of Congress and, apparently, with the evangelical Christian community whose members have ceded the floor to crickets.

Drug price gouging: An American story

Published on Fri, 07/19/2019 - 4:33pm

To be American is a wonderful thing most of the time. There are moments, however, when it is downright humiliating. Can you imagine a more pitiful scene than a busload of Americans traveling 815 miles from Minneapolis to a Walmart in London, Ontario, Canada, to buy insulin at a 10th — a 10th! — of the price charged in the United States?