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Barack is back Reunions with old friends can be nourishing, joyful occasions. But they can also be awkward: uncomfortable reminders of past differences, full of signs of how far you have drifted from one another. Barack Obama’s return to the White House for the first time since leaving office to pal it up with his one-time right-hand man felt more like the latter — though it was President Biden who appeared more uncomfortable than his old boss. At an event to lavish praise on the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s biggest legislative achievement, the 44th president jokingly referred to Biden as the “vice president” before adding: “That was a joke.

Last week, conservative media company the Daily Wire announced it would begin selling shaving supplies under the brand name Jeremy’s Razors. Why is a media company selling razors? Because Harry’s Razors, a longtime Daily Wire sponsor, recently dropped the partnership due to “misaligned values.” In the launch video for Jeremy’s Razors, Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing mocked the woke razor companies with which he plans to compete. “[Michael Knowles] went and said that boys are boys and girls are girls, and that was just too much for Harry's,” Boreing said. “And it's not just Harry's, either. Gillette razors used to be the best a man could get. Then they decided that men are too toxic, unless you're the kind of man who teaches his daughter to shave her beard.

That the federal budget process is broken is the worst kept "secret" in Washington. The White House and Congress know it. The think tanks know it. A 2010 study from the progressive Center for American Progress called the budget process “not a pretty picture.” The conservative Heritage Foundation said in 2005 that the process “stifles debate, prevents cooperation, and frequently breaks down.” Proposals come along every few years to fix the problem, but nothing ever gets done. “The fundamental reason why the federal process is broken is because Congress doesn’t have a budget,” says Kurt Couchman, a senior fellow at Americans for Prosperity. “Congress doesn’t do a budget. Congress does appropriation bills, there are 12 of them.

Watchers of the news might be forgiven for thinking the Biden administration is worried about the election-year optics of more migrants at our southern border. The International Committee of the Red Cross is predicting high waves of migration through Mexico and Central America. The Department of Homeland Security last week requested help from the Pentagon. Also last week, the administration announced that asylum officers, rather than just immigration court judges, will be permitted to adjudicate the claims of immigrants seeking asylum at the border. In addition to these initiatives, I’d suggest another policy: do away with birthright citizenship and dual citizenship.

Modern American conservatism is composed of three distinct traditions: libertarian economics, foreign-policy hawkism and social traditionalism. This “fusion” was born of a contingent historical moment, the Cold War, when the Soviet threat forced different social classes and their ideological spokesmen to band together in common cause. There was no eternal principle demanding that these groups tie their destinies together — a fact that became apparent with Donald Trump’s rise, which divided the three camps along various axes of alliance and enmity. Fusionism is dead. Well and truly dead.

Has Joe Biden gone loco over Ukraine? In Warsaw, Biden proclaimed of Russian president Vladimir Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Biden also called Putin a "butcher." Then, in a meeting with the Polish president, Biden said the US regards NATO’s Article 5 as a “sacred commitment.” Biden called Warsaw a “sacred place” in the history of Europe and in “humankind’s unending search for freedom.” Biden went on to describe the conflict in Ukraine as "a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.

There’s a “Draft Ron DeSantis” campaign afoot within the Republican Party as some conservatives attempt to find a standard bearer not named Donald Trump. The Florida governor has attained popularity among vocal right-wing activists due to his resistance to drawn-out coronavirus mitigation measures beyond his initial “stay at home” and bar and restaurant closure orders and the banning of alcohol sales at bars. His public squabble with Rebekah Jones, the creator of his state health department’s Covid-19 dashboard, led to more praise from conservatives when her whistleblower story started showing cracks. DeSantis’s likability rose further after a “pay-to-play” implication by CBS last year turned out to be false.

Senate carpool dad Ben Sasse recently made headlines when he went on a rant against installing TV cameras inside the Supreme Court. "A huge part of why this institution doesn’t work well is because we have cameras everywhere," Sasse said of Congress. He warned that televising the Supreme Court might cause it to go the same way, that it might incentivize, as he delicately characterized Congress's conduct, "jackassery." There's an entire anthology waiting to be written on Sasse's use of creative swearing in the Senate (after the January 6 riot, he waxed poetic about "kicking Hitler's ass and going to the moon"). Yet the senator from Nebraska is absolutely right.