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Commentary: Leaders lead.
Enough already. It is time for Nashville to step up and follow New York’s and San Francisco’s lead, and put in place a vaccination/testing mandate for high-contact indoor establishments and large-venue events. That opening paragraph might strike some as delusional: sure, we’re the blue island in a (feels like literally) bloody red sea, but we’re […]
Commentary: The vax of life
Bringing her vaxo-enthusiasm tour of the south to a Nashville distillery last month, Jill Biden told the assembled dozens that the COVID-19 vaccine “offers almost perfect protection,” plus “it’s just absolutely free so why not?” It’s a fair question, Madame First Spousal Unit, if you assume your intended audience of the unvaccinated can rationally evaluate […]
Commentary: Lost in America
Like many political junkies cooling their heels while awaiting herd immunity, I’ve spent a lot of time this spring puzzling over the present state and future trajectory of the post-Trump Republican Party. Will it transition from something that looks like a cult back into something that looks like a party? And maybe take up governing […]
Bare Minimum
I need a research assistant. I’ll pay you $725 a week. Assuming your performance is good the first year I’ll drop your weekly pay to $702. The next year it’ll be $688, and then $678. In year five your pay is $667, and if you hang in with me for a decade, I’ll reward your […]
Red Reckoning
Thanks to recent events, cogitation about the future of the Republican Party is now a growth industry bursting at the seams. How Trumpy will the party remain now that the Trump brand wafts the stench of insurrection? What political price will be paid by the stop-the-steal dead-enders in Congress who even after the mayhem of […]
Column: Go home, Lamar.
Culminating 18 years of distinguished mediocrity in the halls of power, Lamar Alexander took to the Senate floor last week to give what was billed as his (capital F capital S) Farewell Speech. As public address it was comically self-delusional, projecting an inflated sense of accomplishment and self-satisfaction that in normal times we might easily […]
The End of Stupid?
President Toddler’s post-election tantrum slash adventure—a third-rate legal team flooding the courts with fourth-rate filings, with a few feeble attempts to intimidate local election officials tossed in for effect—is going nowhere fast. Or it would be going nowhere fast if it was fast, but almost three weeks after the election it’s more accurate to say […]
Commentary: Losing my religion
Public officials doing the people’s business are entitled to govern with religiosity as a defining personal attribute, if that’s their bag. If the governor wants to praise Jesus fifty times in his state-of-the-state address it would be odd, but he’s welcome to have at it and let voters decide at the next election if he’s […]
Commentary: Survey says?
This is where I reassure panicky Democrats and assorted anti-Trumpers that it’s all going to be okay. With under a month to go, the polls paint a reasonably optimistic picture of 2020’s electoral landscape. At this point in the column, readers are urged to refrain from having a glance at my then-seemingly-spot-on August 2004 piece […]
To Hell With Absentee Ballots
With the bluster and propaganda of the political conventions in the rear view mirror we can turn our attention back to the things that really matter in life: fretting over operational details of the U.S. Postal Service, spiffing up our yards so they look nice when MS-13 members show up for the open house next […]
Show Me The Democracy
What do you do when your elected representatives ignore the people’s wants and decline to do the people’s business? I’m talking here about simple and direct refusal to enact measures that clear majorities of the voting public want. The good people of the great state of Missouri showed me an excellent answer just last week: […]
Column: Inbox Assault
With campaigns so thoroughly filtered through polls, press, pundits, and other words starting with p that will come to me eventually, sometimes it’s worth taking a step back, turning it all off, and looking at what candidates have to say directly to their supporters. In that spirit, then, comes the experiment in political self-harm I […]