Politics

Tammy Duckworth, a junior senator from Illinois, is being considered by Joe Biden’s vetting team for the VP slot. While she is not yet viewed as a leading prospect, this battle-tested lawmaker has been elbowing herself into serious contention over the past several weeks. Whomever Biden picks to be his running mate has to present herself as a potential president, considering that Biden might only be able to serve one term. Emerging now as a strong and unproblematic leader has real currency in the selection process. Duckworth seems to be having this moment at exactly the right time, and it could be moving her one step closer to the White House.

‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ That was Ben Franklin’s famous response when asked, as the Constitutional Convention ended in 1787, what sort of government the delegates had crafted. Time was, I thought Franklin's answer droll. But on July 4, 2020, I wonder. A republic depends on the rule of law. The rule of law has been having a hard time of it lately. So: can we keep it? I have never been tempted to equate the equality celebrated by the Declaration of Independence with egalitarianism. The philosopher Harvey Mansfield was obviously correct, I believe, when he spoke of the 'self-evident half-truth that all men are created equal.' Differences in talent, disposition, family situation, and plain dumb luck inevitably result in differences in achievement.

Politicos have spent years asking what would happen to the Republican party post-Trump. Establishment types prayed that he was an anomaly and that the party would return to ‘normal’ after his reign. Slightly more savvy observers worried that the Trump base would slip back toward the Democrats once they lost their champion and the GOP would have to rebuild a winning coalition. Both relied on an assumption that Trumpism cannot exist without Trump. That was wrong. Elitist politicians and the mainstream media have been so obsessed with denouncing Trump’s egregious character that his voters developed a reflexive tendency to defend the man rather than his policies. But nearly four years later, many Trump voters feel unsatisfied with his list of accomplishments.

You are in your office. Your boss appears. 'Can I have five minutes?' You can hardly refuse. His face is cold and grim, like he has just been diagnosed with COVID-19. He wants to talk to you about your comments. What comments? The comments you made about Jane in accounting. You misgendered her. You called her 'he'. Look, you say, you're sorry. Jane was James when you met her. It wasn’t malicious, it was just force of habit. Maybe so, but 'intent isn't magic'. Well, you'll apologize when you next see her. Maybe so, but we can't let something like this happen again. You're going to have to take some sensitivity training — unpaid, of course, and on your own time. You want to quit. You can't.

Will nobody think of the pigeons? That thought has repeatedly occurred to me, as beloved roosts for generations of urban pigeons have been toppled in one city after another on both sides of the Atlantic by the radical left, in the greatest eruption of iconoclasm since the era when Theodora graced the burlesque stage in Constantinople. Tearing down Confederate war memorials, it turns out, is a gateway drug to toppling statues of Catholic saints, Civil War abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln himself. Gradually, it has dawned on a horrified, watching world: they don’t hate Confederates. They hate statues! All statues!Now, thanks to the actions of a lawless few, countless pigeons in cities in America and Europe have been rendered homeless.

The conservative legal movement has again been bludgeoned. The culprit, as has far too often been the case, is once more the Supreme Court’s most mercurial chief justice, John Roberts. In June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, a 5-4 Court majority enjoined Louisiana’s enforcement of its law that would require abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of a prenatal abattoir. The Court’s four liberals, ever-reliable in their outcome-oriented efforts to further the progressive political agenda, wrote for a pro-abortion plurality. Roberts, for his part, wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment — notwithstanding the fact he dissented in a virtually analogous Texas case, Whole Women’s Health v.

'While Biden was in his basement, @realDonaldTrump had 5.3 MILLION+ viewers tune in to his rally,' wrote GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel last week. It's a variation on a theme for the Republican party of late: take the vacant airwaves left by a subdued Biden campaign and fill them with spurious claims about the whereabouts of the presumptive Democratic nominee. Sure, Biden has been quiet, relative to Trump — who isn't? — but he hasn't been totally basement-bound. The former vice president has been venturing out for socially distanced local speeches. He gave one on healthcare in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Thursday, stopped off in the Pennsylvania towns of Yeadon and Darby the week before, and hosted an economic round table in Philadelphia on June 11.