Friday November 22, 2019

Latest Poll

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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'REPUBLICAN PARTY: October 20, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Will.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\n“I am a classically trained engineer,” says Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, “and I firmly believe in regression to the mean.” Applying a concept from statistics to the randomness of today’s politics is problematic. In any case, Hurd, 42, is not waiting for the regression of our politics from the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum to something like temperate normality. He is leaving Congress at the end of this, his third term. And he sees portents that his blinkered party would be prudent to notice.\n HURD IS one of six Texas Republican congressman who has decided not to seek reelection next year. Until this year, none of them had, since 2011, experienced the purgatory of being in the House minority. In the 2018 “Texodus,” five Texas Republican representatives retired (a sixth resigned) and two were defeated. Of the 241 Republicans in the House when Donald Trump was inaugurated, almost 40% are gone or going. See a trend? \n Hurd, who is not foreswearing public life, insists, “I’m just getting started.” Might he come back to electoral politics? “For sure.” His “passion” is “the nexus between technology and national security.” He is, however, saying goodbye to the rigors of the “DC to DQ” tours that have regularly taken him to the far reaches of his district. For you effete coastal residents who are unfamiliar with the delights of flyover country, DQ means Dairy Queen. Hurd meets gatherings of constituents at DQs because “every town has one and everyone knows where they are.” \n In 2018, he was one of just three Republicans to win a district carried by Hillary Clinton. (She won his by 3 points.) His House race was the nation’s fourth-most competitive: He won by 926 votes. But, then, his largest victory, in 2016, was by just 3,051 votes. His district, which includes 23% of Texas’ land and extends from San Antonio’s fringe to New Mexico’s border, is the state’s largest, encompassing all or parts of 29 counties and 820 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It is 58,000 square miles — almost as big as Georgia and larger than Illinois and 25 other states. It is 69% Hispanic, and just 4% African American.\n HURD, an articulate, assertive 6’4” former CIA operative, and the only African American Republican in the House, thinks voting trends “are moving so fast” that 2020 “has nothing to do with 2016.” Just as “U.S. economic and military dominance are no longer guaranteed,” neither is Republican dominance in Texas, a state that is hardly immune to national trends. \n In the 2016 U.S House of Representatives elections, no Republican incumbent from Texas lost and only one was elected with less than 55%. In 2018, two lost and 10 received less than 55%. In 2016, four incumbent Republicans in Texas’ House were defeated and only four won with majorities under 55%. In 2018, there were eight loses and 16 won with less than 55%. John Cornyn, who recently stepped down as the second-highest Republican leader (majority whip) in the U.S. Senate, has won three terms with majorities of 55.3%, 54.8% and 61.6% but seems headed for a more competitive race next year. No wonder Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says Texas is “ground zero” for Democratic attempts to strengthen their hold on the House. \n Nationally, Republicans are decreasingly strong where two generations ago they were especially robust — in suburbs. Texas ranks high among the states in terms of the percentage of the population that is suburban. And statewide, whites are a minority. \n In 2008, with the Great Recession under way, John McCain carried Texas by 12 points. In 2012, Mitt Romney carried it by 16. In 2016, Trump (who Hurd did not endorse) won by nine points. In Texas’ most important 2018 contest for a federal office, incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won by just 3. See a trend? \n If the Democratic Party can collect Texas’ electoral votes — 38 today, perhaps 41 after the 2020 census — as well as California’s 55, it will reap 35.5% of a winning 270 from just two states. Then the GOP will have almost no plausible path to 270, and Democrats who are currently hot to abolish the Electoral College will suddenly say: Oh, never mind.\n AND HURD will repeat what he says today: Texas is “already purple.” Republicans “have to get out of our own way” because “if the Republican Party in Texas does not start looking like Texas there will not be a Republican Party in Texas.”\n', created = 1574411818, expire = 1574498218, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:725f9a1b062cbe04102972e3aac3d8e7' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax the “excessive” exercise of a First Amendment right, and the NBA’s painful lesson about the perils of moral grandstanding illustrate how progressivism has become a compound of self-satisfied moral preening and a thirst for coercion.\n O’ROURKE is innocent of originality: Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet recommends a “hard line” against people who deviate from progressivism: “Trying to be nice to the losers didn’t work well after the Civil War” and “taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945.” Apparently it is progressive to regard unprogressive Americans as akin to enemies vanquished in wars. No Churchillian nonsense about “in victory, magnanimity.” \n UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh notes that in 1952 California voters used a progressive device, a referendum, to amend the state’s constitution to deny tax exemptions to certain people despised by the majority — people who advocated the unlawful overthrow of the U.S. government. Fortunately, in 1958, in another case from California (concerning denial of property tax exemptions to veterans who refused to swear an oath not to advocate the unlawful overthrow of the government), the U.S. Supreme Court did its counter-majoritarian duty to protect minority rights, striking down this measure: “To deny an exemption to claimants who engage in certain forms of speech is ... the same as if the state were to fine them for this speech.” \n Warren, a policy polymath, has a plan for everything, including for taxing speech that annoys her. The pesky First Amendment (in 2014, 54 Democratic senators voted to amend it to empower Congress to regulate spending that disseminates political speech about Congress) says Congress shall make no law ... abridging the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” One name for such petitioning is lobbying. Warren proposes steep taxes (up to 75%) on “excessive” lobbying expenditures, as though the amendment says Congress can forbid “excessive” petitioning. Lobbyists are unpopular, and her entire agenda depends on what the amendment was written to prevent — arousing majority passions against an unpopular minority (the wealthy). Warren, who like O’Rourke is operatic when denouncing Donald Trump’s ignorance of, or hostility to, constitutional norms, might not be a plausible person to make the case against him. \n “In defeat, defiance” was Churchill’s recommendation. The NBA’s is: When tyrants snarl, grovel. Beijing’s tantrum — great powers do not resemble frustrated toddlers — was detonated by a Houston Rockets employee who tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters. Commissioner Adam Silver, who represents the teams’ owners — \n Sorry. Forgive the insensitivity. The NBA has been so insufferable in its virtue signaling, so relentless in its progressive preening, that this past summer it announced that it has “moved away” from calling those who own teams “owners.” The term supposedly carries connotations of slavery. \n But back to Silver. He took the 2017 All-Star Game away from Charlotte, so horrified was the NBA by a North Carolina law requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms according to the sex on their birth certificates. The NBA’s decision expressed its “long-standing core values,” which are, however, compatible with the NBA having its China training camp in Xinjiang province, where Chinese citizens are in concentration camps that facilitate “re-education.”\n THERE IS strong evidence (from an independent tribunal that met in London) that China, which has many more people in concentration camps — perhaps 1.5 million in Xinjiang alone — than Hitler had during the 1936 Olympics, is still harvesting organs, including hearts, from prisoners, some while still alive, for Chinese and foreign purchasers. Silver, however, is ostentatiously sensitive about “owners,” so Beijing should avoid that word, or else. The NBA should have done what a congressional letter recommends: suspend activities in China until “government-controlled broadcasters and government-controlled commercial sponsors end their boycott of NBA activities and the selective treatment of the Houston Rockets.” This would have caused Beijing’s infantilism to become a national embarrassment — a weak nation’s idea of national strength.\n UNFORTUNATELY, however, O’Rourke, Warren and Silver demonstrate the tendency of too many progressives to cut constitutional corners, to despise and bully adversaries, and to practice theatrical but selective indignation about attacks on fundamental American principles, some of which they themselves traduce. Just what we did not need in our dispiriting civic life — additional evidence that there really is no such thing as rock bottom.\n', created = 1574411818, expire = 1574498218, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:5da30b56f609283637ebb5025ff7f512' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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What a tangled web we weave when we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can favor some groups without disfavoring others, or disfavor some without acting on the basis of stereotypes. But before disparaging Harvard’s attempts to shape its student body, and before judging the judge’s opinion, consider three facts: \n First, Harvard admitted just 4.5% of the 43,330 applicants to this year’s freshman class of 1,650, so it needs some sorting metrics (to serve the institution as a whole and many subconstituencies, from the athletic department to alumni relations). Second, if Harvard were to admit every applicant with a perfect grade-point average, it would increase the size of its entering class 400%. Third, a Harvard document presented in the trial estimated that relying exclusively on objective academic measurements — secondary school transcripts and SAT scores — would produce a Harvard student body 43% Asian American and 1% African American. (Caltech, which relies much more heavily on those than other highly selective institutions, enrolled a 2018 freshman class that was 40% Asian.) \n Now, three questions. Would you be comfortable with a legal requirement that only such objective metrics be used in college admissions? If that were required, would Harvard have to choose by lottery the 25% of the “perfect GPAs” to admit? Would you be comfortable with the nation’s most elite institutions — very few schools are selective enough to be able to curate their student bodies for whatever diversity is desired — looking so little like the nation? \n Before the discomforting reality of racial preferences was blurred by the anodyne phrase “affirmative action,” the 1976 Democratic platform spoke of “compensatory opportunity,” thereby presenting race-conscious policies as remediation for past social injuries. But the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision, the first concerning higher education admissions, authorized schools to consider race as a small “plus” factor in admissions in order to achieve “diversity.” So, “race-conscious remedies” were not to be remedial. Or of finite duration. They would be forever, for the benefit of the privileged — those admitted to, and who administer, colleges and universities.\n IN THIS fifth decade of judicial tinkering, with the Harvard case probably heading to the Supreme Court, it is clear that the admissions departments of highly selective universities will devise metrics compatible with porous judicial language in order to shape student bodies to serve what they consider institutional needs. Courts can try to confine admissions departments with porous terms like minor “plus-factors” that are “narrowly tailored” to achieve a “critical mass” of this or that minority without “unduly” harming any group. But those departments will resort to cynical evasions. \n Taking race “into account” could just as well be called taking into account cultures (of communities or ethnic cohorts). Some attributes, including those conducive to academic excellence, are disproportionately prevalent among various groups (e.g., Asian Americans, Jews at various times). \n So, a fourth question: If universities do not consciously shape their student bodies, who will? The U.S. Education Department, with criteria as variable as the nation’s election results? \n America’s great universities, having become playthings of progressives, are now targeted by populists. Two years ago, the Republican tax bill targeted elite schools with the largest per-student endowments. This tax raises a pittance but scratches a populist itch — resentment of excellence. Last month, a Republican administration’s Education Department threatened to withdraw federal funding from a joint Duke University and University of North Carolina Middle East-studies program because it lacks viewpoint — wait for it — diversity. And reflects hostility to Israel, is insufficiently “positive” about Christianity and Judaism, and is saturated with extraneous progressive propaganda. These charges, and accusations of anti-Semitism, are entirely plausible, but are conservatives, supposed proponents of modest government, comfortable with bureaucrats dictating the contents of college courses?\n THE UNINHIBITED District Court judge in the Harvard case, who suggested Harvard admissions officers be trained against “implicit bias,” asserted that student-body diversity fosters “tolerance, acceptance and understanding.” So, consider a fifth question: Is it a mere coincidence that academia’s obsession with diversity has coincided with a tsunami of campus intolerance and hysteria?\n', created = 1574411818, expire = 1574498218, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:7c65f5bc803de37781893041fb167ab2' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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His brother-in-law died when North Koreans killed 17 South Korean officials in a 1983 attempt to assassinate South Korea’s president during a visit to Burma.\n NORTH KOREA’S opaque regime possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and conventional artillery and rockets that could devastate large portions of this metropolitan area of 25 million without any infantry or armor crossing the 38th parallel. But North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un is less unpopular among South Koreans than is Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. \n Japan’s 35-year colonization of the Korean Peninsula ended with World War II. Seventy-four years later, South Korea, where the anniversary of Japan’s 1945 surrender is a national holiday, is jeopardizing its and Northeast Asia’s security in order to pursue war-era grievances concerning Japan’s exploitation of forced labor. Japan says this issue, including expressions of remorse and restitution, was settled in 1965 — many more years ago than the Japanese occupation lasted. South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, whose party is facing a general election in 2020, has agitated this dispute, and a Korean court recently reopened it. Many Koreans say Japan’s reparations have been insufficient and its apologies insincere. \n In separate incidents this summer, two South Korean men burned themselves to death to protest Japan’s government. Imports of Japanese beer are down 97%, Toyota and Honda sales are down 59% and 81% respectively. Some Koreans bitterly remember — really — that their marathoner had to run with a Japanese flag on his chest at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. \n Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has responded by restricting sales of vital industrial chemicals to South Korea, the world’s 12th largest. Most seriously, South Korea has withdrawn from an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan as North Korea continues missile tests. This distracting spat, which sends a signal of unseriousness, is risky for a nation that thinks, with reason, that one cause of the Korean War was Secretary of State Dean Acheson declaring, six months before North Korea invaded, that South Korea was outside the U.S. “defensive perimeter.”\n SOUTH KOREAN polls reveal troubling age differences and a small middle ground. Young people are much less sanguine about their northern neighbor than Moon is. South Koreans in their 20s are the most hostile to warmer relations, or unification, with North Korea. Progressives are often middle-aged and some of them protest the statue of MacArthur in Incheon and are generally skeptical about U.S. policies and motives. \n What Winston Churchill said of the Balkans — that they produce more history than they can consume — has been true of this peninsula for more than a century. Control of it was among the contested issues behind the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95); and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), which made Russia ripe for the 1917 Russian Revolution; and of course the Korean War. \n Four U.S. presidents prior to the current one toiled to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. This continued until — if you believe the current one — he and Kim spent a few hours together in Singapore, “fell in love,” and their conjugal relations produced this presidential tweet: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” If, however, today’s president is mistaken (there is precedent), so has been the durable belief that cajoling lubricated by bribery (food, energy, assistance building light-water reactors) would deflect North Korea from its decades-long nuclear project. The failure is writ large in the fact that North Korea has placed in its constitution the ambiguous description of itself as a “nuclear power.”\n HAN SUNG-JOO is so given to softly spoken understatements that, he says, he hardly seems Korean: He says that his countrymen are “emotion-prone.” So, attention must be paid when he says his country is more than “polarized,” it is afflicted with “cleavages.” Americans, who are hyperbole-prone, have a seemingly endless series of high-decibel shouting matches over this or that supposedly “existential” matter. South Koreans actually live with such a threat, one that Moon minimizes, and that events might be maximizing.\n', created = 1574411818, expire = 1574498218, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:6687daf8793d97896106eba35ede295b' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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Then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit held, in effect, that Congress can now be said to have proscribed such discrimination without intending to. Dissenting judges rejected this conclusion because it empowers courts to do what Congress clearly did not do but easily could do. \n Kimberly Hively, a part-time adjunct professor at an Indiana community college, says she was repeatedly denied a full-time position, and then her part-time contract was not renewed, because she is a lesbian. The 7th Circuit majority said the question is “what it means to discriminate on the basis of sex” — are “actions taken on the basis of sexual orientation” a “subset of actions taken on the basis of sex”? \n Citing “the broader context of the statute,” the majority acknowledged but disregarded the fact that Congress has “frequently” considered adding, but has declined to add, “sexual orientation” to the act. The majority professed to have “no idea what inference to draw from congressional inaction.” Besides, “The goalposts have been moving over the years, as the Supreme Court has shed more light on” the phrase “sex discrimination.” So, the majority said, Congress in 1964 “may not have realized or understood the full scope of the words it chose.” Discrimination based on sexual orientation necessarily involves “taking the victim’s biological sex ... into account.” Hence “it would require considerable calisthenics to remove the ‘sex’ from ‘sexual orientation.’” \n “Times have changed,” said a judge concurring with the majority opinion. He continues: “[T]he meaning of the statute has changed and the word ‘sex’ in it now connotes both gender and sexual orientation.” The concurring judge said that “it is well-nigh certain” that homosexuality “did not figure in the minds of the legislators” in 1964. Then “homosexuality was almost invisible.” Since then, however, “nothing has changed more” than attitudes toward sex, which now “has a broader meaning than the genitalia you’re born with.” Therefore — non sequitur alert — the “passage of time and concomitant change in attitudes ... can justify a fresh interpretation” of the statute that is “ripe for reinterpretation.”\n RIPENESS MEANS, for the concurring judge, “taking advantage of what the last half century has taught” in order to correct “statutory obsolescence” and “to avoid placing the entire burden of updating old statutes on the legislative branch.” When and where, one wonders, were courts authorized to share the “burden” of legislating? \n “Our role,” said the minority, “is to give effect to the enacted text, interpreting the statutory language as a reasonable person would have understood it at the time of enactment. ... We lack the discretion to ascribe to [the act] a meaning it did not bear at its inception.” The majority has engaged in “judicial statutory updating” that “cannot be reconciled with the constitutional design,” which requires bicameralism (both houses of Congress to enact or amend a law) and presentment (of laws and amendments to the president). \n The minority said that “sexual orientation” is not the same forbidden category of employment discrimination as sex is. This is an interpretation that “has been stable for many decades.” As proof that the terms “sex” and “sexual orientation” are not used interchangeably, the minority cited the Violence Against Women Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of both “sex” and “sexual orientation,” and the Hate Crimes Act, which imposes heightened punishment for harms inflicted because of both “gender” or “sexual orientation.” \n The minority acknowledged, and clearly welcomed, the “striking cultural change” since 1964. It could have said 2004, when electorates in 11 states voted on referendums to amend their constitutions to define marriage as exclusively heterosexual. All 11 measures passed, all by double-digit margins. Just 15 years later, that controversy has cooled.\n THE 7TH Circuit’s minority said that if Hively was denied a job because of her sexual orientation, she was treated unjustly, but not illegally under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It is depressing but clear that the Supreme Court needs to remind Congress — and the 7th Circuit — that “statutory updating” is Congress’ job.\n', created = 1574411818, expire = 1574498218, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:ccc8ab247687e4e4fa3386369642591d' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'IMPEACHMENT: September 29, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Will.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nIf Donald Trump were to tweet that 9 is a prime number, that Minneapolis is in Idaho, and that the sun revolves around the Earth — “Make Earth Great Again!” — would even five Republican senators publicly disagree with even one of the tweets? This matters in assessing the wisdom of beginning an impeachment process against the president. If every senator in the Democratic caucus were to vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial concerning articles voted by the House, 20 Republicans would have to join them to remove him from office. So, the likelihood that he will not finish his term is vanishingly small.\n WHAT, THEN, can be accomplished by the impeachment inquiry that was announced just 406 days before the next presidential election? Three things. \n First, and not least important, it would augment the public stock of useful information and harmless pleasure to make Senate Republicans stop silently squirming and start taking audible responsibility for the president who they evidently think they exist to enable. Second, it would affirm Congress’ primacy. \n We have heard too many defensive assertions that Congress is “co-equal” with the executive and judicial branches. It is more than that. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Jay Cost notes, Congress is involved in the other branches’ actions by determining the size and scope of the other branches. (All federal courts other than the Supreme Court, and every executive department and officer except the president and vice president, are Congress’ creations.) And by confirming or rejecting nominees to executive and judicial positions. And by stipulating those nominees’ salaries. And by overriding presidential vetoes. And by exercising the power — unused since June 4, 1942 — to declare war. And by ratifying or rejecting treaties, and shaping the military’s size and mission. And by initiating constitutional amendments. As Cost says, the other branches are largely incapable of interfering with Congress, which sets its own pay and rules. Yet today’s Republican-controlled Senate, Trump’s sock puppet, will not consider legislation that he disapproves — as though the Senate expressing its own judgment about the public good would be lèse-majesté. \n Third, articles of impeachment might concern his general stonewalling of congressional inquiries. This obduracy vitiates Congress’ role in the system of checks and balances, one purpose of which is to restrain rampant presidents. An impeachment proceeding could strengthen institutional muscles that Congress has allowed to atrophy.\n THESE THREE benefits from impeachment would not be trivial. But even cumulatively they probably are not worth the costs of impeachment — costs in time, energy and political distraction. This is so because, regardless of the evidence presented, there is approximately zero chance of an anti-Trump insurrection by 20 of his vigorously obedient Senate Republicans. So, a Senate trial might seem, to the attentive portion of the public, yet another episode of mere gesture politics, of which there currently is too much. And it would further inflame the president’s combustible supporters. \n As this column has hitherto argued (May 31), impeachment can be retrospective, as punishment for offenses committed, and prospective, to prevent probable future injuries to society. The latter is problematic regarding Trump: What is known about his Ukraine involvement reveals nothing — nothing — about his character or modus vivendi that was not already known. This is unfortunate but undeniable: Many millions voted for him because he promised that the loutishness of his campaigning foreshadowed his governing style. Promise keeping is a problematic ground for impeachment. \n Assumption College’s Greg Weiner understands what he calls “the politics of prudence,” and this truth: “That an offense is impeachable does not mean it warrants impeachment.” Impeachment is unwarranted, for example, if the reasonable judgment of seasoned political people is that impeachment might enhance the political strength and longevity of the official whose behavior merits impeachment. \n This might be a moment in this nation’s life when worse is better: The squalor of the president’s behavior regarding Ukraine, following so much other repulsive behavior, is giving many Americans second thoughts about presidential power, which has waxed as Congress has allowed, often eagerly, its power to wane. Impeachment, however dubious, might at least be a leading indicator of an overdue recalibration of our institutional equilibrium.\n NEVERTHELESS, the best antidote for a bad election is a better election. The election the nation needs in 400 days would remove the nation’s most recent mistake and inflict instructive carnage — the incumbent mistake likes this noun — on his abjectly obedient party.\n', created = 1574411818, expire = 1574498218, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:5c0f12891ed81c8d1137115b2a550da2' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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George Will

10/22/2019 - 9:07pm

George Will

REPUBLICAN PARTY: October 20, 2019 “I am a classically trained engineer,” says Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, “and I firmly believe in regression to the mean.” Applying a concept from statistics to the randomness of today’s politics is problematic. In any case, Hurd, 42, is not waiting for the regression of our politics from the extreme ends of the ideological...

Progressives are too willing to cut constitutional corners

By: George Will 10/22/2019 - 9:06pm

THE LEFT: October 17, 2019 Presidential aspirant Beto O’Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O’Rourke’s suggestion, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax the “excessive”...

College diversity tinkering: What a tangled web

By: George Will 10/16/2019 - 12:32pm

ACADEMIA: October 10, 2019 The judge took 130 pages to explain that Harvard’s “holistic review” admissions policies — which include ascribing particular attributes to certain ethnicities, such as Asian Americans, and assessing the value to Harvard of those attributes — are, considering 41 years of Supreme Court...

The Korean Peninsula: A dangerous neighborhood

By: George Will 10/09/2019 - 1:29pm

SOUTH KOREA: October 3, 2019 In 1950, when Han Sung-joo was 10, shrapnel from an artillery shell lodged in his hip. This happened as Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s troops, fresh from the bold Incheon landing, were retaking this city — it would be lost and retaken again — after North Korea’s June invasion. The shell fragment was...

Supreme Court to decide whether ‘sex’ includes sexual orientation

By: George Will 10/07/2019 - 5:09pm

SUPREME COURT: October 6, 2019 The beginning of the Supreme Court’s term this week includes momentous oral arguments on Tuesday in two cases that illustrate clashing theories about how statutes should be construed. If properly decided, the cases will nudge Congress to act like a legislative body. AT ISSUE is whether workplace...

The best antidote for a bad election is a better election

By: George Will 10/01/2019 - 10:08pm

IMPEACHMENT: September 29, 2019 If Donald Trump were to tweet that 9 is a prime number, that Minneapolis is in Idaho, and that the sun revolves around the Earth — “Make Earth Great Again!” — would even five Republican senators publicly disagree with even one of the tweets? This matters in assessing the wisdom of beginning...

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