Public servants in national security have managed an uncomfortable balancing act since President Donald Trump took office. They were labeled adversaries by members of Trump’s inner circle from the beginning. Opponents of the new administration, meanwhile, hoped the “deep state” would form a silent resistance inside the government to check the president’s authority. Predecessors flooded […]
Op-Eds
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World economy improving but still susceptable
WASHINGTON — The news is better than you might think. A decade after the onset of the 2008-09 global financial crisis — an event usually dated to the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. — the world economy seems to be repairing itself. To be sure, worries remain. The latest is that overborrowed “emerging-market” countries — Argentina, […]
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Socialism not on U.S. political menu
What’s with all this socialism business? A handful of lefty candidates are calling themselves socialists without a single radical socialistic item on their promise lists. They seem to have little idea of what socialism is. And most of the conservatives talking back to them don’t seem to know, either. Simply put, socialism is a system […]
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No excuse for president's treatment of McCain
WASHINGTON — Since the founding of our republic, there have been precisely 1,974 members of the United States Senate. John McCain is only the eighth senator who was not also president or vice president to lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol — and only the 31st individual overall to be so honored […]
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The population threat to China's prosperity
While the Chinese Communist government basks in China’s economic success, several terrible authoritarian decisions made in Beijing put the country’s stability and sustained prosperity at risk. Though a forbidden public topic, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre haunts the government. Chinese citizens bitterly resent the massacre, its cloak of totalitarian silence and Beijing’s continued police state […]
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Corporation takes a risk to support Kaepernick
Colin Kaepernick is staring at you. It’s a black-and-white image, a portrait taken from a distance that feels painfully close, even intimate. Kaepernick, the reviled and revered NFL quarterback who has been unemployed and unemployable since he sparked a movement of athletes and others kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African-Americans, […]
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Kavanaugh is eminently qualified
Since Robert Bork’s “borking” 30 years ago, Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for a high court nominee by a Republican president have become predictable. Democrats, who favor a “living Constitution,” meaning whatever they think the founding document ought to say, are pitted against “originalists,” who believe the document speaks for itself and should be taken as […]
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Health care rules the labor market
WASHINGTON — It is wages versus health benefits. With Labor Day behind us, just about everything seems to be going right for typical American workers, with the glaring and puzzling exception of wage stagnation. The unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, near its lowest since 2000. The number of new jobs exceeds the peak in 2008 […]
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Identity politics is a double-edged sword
The recent primaries, particularly on the Democratic side, have unleashed a pack of first-ism cliches. If elected in November, Andrew Gillum would become “Florida’s first black governor” (CNN). Stacey Abrams in Georgia could be “America’s first black female governor” (Time). Jared Polis, the Democratic nominee in Colorado, could become “America’s first openly gay elected governor” […]
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DeVos set to undo outrageous Obama era procedures
A judicial process that doesn’t allow the accused to cross-examine his accuser or reliably see the evidence against him is a civil libertarian’s nightmare. It traduces every principle of fairness and is blatantly un-American. Yet Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is about to get savaged for replacing just such a process with something more in keeping […]