Breaking News

Opinion

How to kill US Supreme Court in one simple step

Editorials

In 2016, the conservative writer Mike Anton made a galvanizing case for Donald Trump in his famous “Flight 93” essay, arguing that the stakes in the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were existential. His contention that a Clinton win would cement Democratic electoral dominance forever, such that Republicans needed to charge the cockpit or die, was implausible at the time, and seems more so in retrospect. If Hillary had won in 2016, in all likelihood, she would have been gone in 2020, washed away by the pandemic just like Trump was. This time, though, really might ...

Find ways to make data centers, manufacturing jobs both prosper

Editorials

There has never been a product so much in demand . . . ever. Over 240 million smartphones are in use in America (I asked Siri). There were 84 million cars connected to the internet in 2012, and 305 million are expected to be connected to the internet by 2030 (again Siri). There are millions of GPS units doing everything from finding fishing holes to the distance to the next putting green. Our refrigerators, lights, thermostats, doorbell cameras, and children’s phones are connected to our phones and computers, which are connected to about everything. We can see about every home in the ...

Keep politicians, lobbyists out of organized collegiate athletics

Editorials

Nearly everyone who is a college sports fan, myself included, knows the state of affairs in the NCAA is one fine mess. Especially regarding football and men’s basketball, the two major money-making sports. Elite and even above-average athletes have effectively become free agents selling their services each year to the highest bidders. Every year the school rosters are different, so there’s almost no team or university loyalty. It’s rent-a-player, and the big college teams are now effectively professionals playing in professional leagues. In some cases, players can be paid ...

We should stop going backward

Editorials

Politicizing health care — from vaccines to research and safety-net funding — has led to some dangerous changes in public health in this country. Among them is the surge in measles and whooping cough cases. Vaccine hesitancy fueled by intentional misinformation and disingenuous religious freedom outrage has resulted in significant increases in the two potentially deadly illnesses. Across the country, there have been 1,983 measles cases so far this year, according to an Ohio Capital Journal report that used U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The total for all of ...

The rise of trust-fund commies

Editorials

The Democratic Socialists of America has a class problem that its own rhetoric is designed to obscure. Its rising stars — Zohran Mamdani, son of a Columbia professor and an acclaimed filmmaker; the Ivy-credentialed activists staffing progressive nonprofits; the heirs animating the movement’s core — reveal a pattern the movement cannot honestly explain. The face of American socialism is increasingly young, college-credentialed, and conspicuously well-bred. This is not coincidence. It is structure. The pattern is older than the DSA. Engels co-authored the Communist Manifesto while ...

DC today breaks my heart

Editorials

Change is not my best friend. Not since the day my family moved from Wisconsin to California when I was 8. Leaving the land of my grandmother, the skating rink and snowballs in winter, Lake Mendota and the tennis courts in summer, the community garden and all that seemed unfair. The Fourth of July parade for kids was pure Americana. I dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Ice cream never tasted better than it did then and there. Los Angeles seemed like paradise lost, with a smoggy sky in a child’s eyes. Grown-ups talked about the Manson murders. Take me back, please! That ...