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There’s nothing guaranteed in our lives

This week, as I was going through my online news feeds, which included updates on the government shutdown, I came across several stories about furloughed federal workers and contractors standing in line at food banks in Maryland and the D.C. area. In Landover, Md., the lines were extremely long, with numerous cars parked on the street near the Capital Area Food Bank. Just over 4 miles away in Hyattsville, Md., photos captured the expressions of apprehension of those patiently waiting for food that mostly consisted of dried, processed and shelf-stable items. Some in line, probably wanting ...

Several strange paths to not talking about the news

Are you, like me, kind of freaking out a little bit? Do masked men patrol your city streets, snatching people up and throwing them into vans headed for overcrowded detention centers where they will be held incommunicado and pressured to sign self-deportation orders that abrogate their rights to a fair trial? Have your lawmakers all seemingly gone on an extended vacation, lolling around their favorite lobbyist’s vacation home, swilling free Chateau Lafite Rothschild and fielding job offers to consult in the industries they’re regulating? Did your commander-in-chief recently ...

So, who’s afraid of big, bad Bari Weiss?

There’s something bonkers in the hard left’s hysteria over Bari Weiss becoming editor-in-chief of CBS News. A psych eval comes toward the end. John Oliver recently delivered an unhinged tirade against Weiss as a right-wing tool of MAGA. Oliver was his usual self — frantic hands, googly eyes and a rapid-fire string of quips that seldom rose above the merely cute. (His producers had the laugh track in fifth gear. You can tell by the repeated “wall of laughter” that suddenly stops.) Weiss resigned from her columnist post at The New York Times and proceeded to launch The Free ...

Illegal betting, sports and the mafia never mix

In 2018, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to strike down a federal law banning sports gambling, thus allowing individual states to decide whether to allow it, or not. It didn’t take a genius to predict what might happen, especially when politicians can find new sources of revenue beyond income, property and sales taxes. Last week, more than 30 people were indicted as part of a national sports betting scandal involving high-profile figures, including Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier. Billups was charged in a scheme involving rigged poker ...

The rare-earths travesty could be a warning sign

In the 1960s, the conservative intellectual James Burnham wrote a book arguing that the decline of Western civilization was a self-imposed choice. The volume, famously called “Suicide of the West,” desperately needs to be updated with an epilogue about the U.S. dependence on China for the mining and processing of rare earths, which ranks as one of the most fantastically stupid and self-damaging strategic missteps of our time. China is exploiting its advantage in trade talks with the U.S., restricting the supply of rare earths to gain leverage. A focus of President ...

No two states voted more alike and closer to the national average in last year’s presidential election than the two states that have gubernatorial elections in this odd-numbered year: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey voted 51.8% for Kamala Harris and 45.9% for Donald Trump. Virginia voted 51.8% for Harris and 46.1% for Trump. Aside from the seven target states and Democratic underperformance in New Hampshire and Minnesota, these were the two closest states in the country. They have other similarities. Large percentages of their voters live in metropolitan areas centered on cities ...