“The Swamp” usually refers to the vast federal bureaucratic machinery of mostly unelected top officials who exercise influence and power without worry about the appearance of conflicts of interest. They are often exempt from the consequences of the laws and regulations that affect others. The chief characteristics of the swamp are the interlocking
Not long ago I waited for a flight to board. The plane took off 45 minutes late. There were only two attendants to accommodate 11 passengers who had requested wheelchair assistance. Such growing efforts to ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But when our plane landed—late and in
Near-daily gossip surrounds Donald Trump's three marquee generals. The media sometimes blare out rumors that General John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, is proving to be a loose cannon and might soon be fired. Lt. General H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, is occasionally rumored to be a robotic PowerPoint wonk
When the human experience is simplistically divided into two worlds, then things increasingly do not easily fit. Specifically, what happens when the number of victims begins to outnumber the pool of oppressors? At that point can the oppressed become victims of the oppressed? The following news stories illustrate the increasingly incoherent world of
Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals for allegedly conspiring to sow confusion in the 2016 presidential election. The chance of extraditing any of the accused from Vladimir Putin's Russia is zero. Some of the Russians' Keystone Cops efforts to disrupt the election favored Donald Trump (as well as Bernie Sanders).
Nancy Pelosi gave a marathon speech on illegal immigration the other day. But how would she know much about the realities of open borders, given her palatial retreat in Northern California and multi-millionaire lifestyle that allows wealthy progressives like herself to be exempt from the consequences of her own hectoring? In the end,
There have been wild reports that the United States is considering a "bloody nose" preemptive attack of some sort on North Korea's nuclear arsenal. Such rumors are unlikely to prove true. Preemptive attacks usually are based on the idea that things will so worsen that hitting first is the only chance to decapitate
Free-marketers are right that tax cuts stimulate economic growth that in turn lead to expanding production and eventually more federal tax revenue. But the problem traditionally has been that to obtain tax reductions, Republicans also have had to sign on reluctantly to larger expenditures. Or, worse, they willingly believed they could spend more,
The Watergate scandal of 1972-74 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon Administration's attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though illegal, political break-in. In the Iran-Contra affair of 1985-87,
Those damn dairy farmers. Why do they insist on trying to govern? Or, put another way: Why are Republicans trusting Devin Nunes to be their oracle of truth!? A former dairy farmer who House intel staffers refer to as Secret Agent Man because he has no idea what’s going on. Thus spoke MSNBC
