Jeb Bush didn’t exactly get skunked in Iowa. But, well, his 2.9 percent showing meant – let’s put the calculator to it, as political savant Nate Silver did: The $14.9 million he spent on advertising alone there meant he harvested one vote for every $2,844. It would have been better for Jeb…
On behalf of a planet and its species, I’m asking a certain Texas grand jury if it still has time on its docket. I speak of the Harris County grand jury that turned the tables on hucksters who conspired to paint Planned Parenthood as a law-breaker. Instead of indicting Houston Planned Parenthood, the grand jury…
At the height of Prohibition, columnist H.L. Mencken proclaimed, “There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more.” He was right. Though single-issue politics had held sway over public policy with the 18th Amendment, the result had been…
The first day after the end of the NFL regular season has come to be called Black Monday — when many a team with a losing record generally fires its coach. This suits the urges of the owner who has promised a winner to the fans, though he didn’t produce players who can win. Blame the coach.…
They are so profuse as to encircle the globe, so lethal that even mutual enemies agree they must be monitored and limited. If you are thinking the “they” refers to firearms, you aren’t thinking the way some policymakers are. No, we speak of a threat that draws undivided attention: the matter of…
When I was 10 I had a yo-yo. It was blue with marbled streaks of silver. At school we weren’t supposed to have yo-yos. But what’s the point of a yo-yo if one can’t show it off? So I empathized with those who came to the Texas Capitol on New Year’s Day with fancy toys…
If Tornado Alley were a battlefield, historically this time of year the cannons would be silenced. Not so this December. All hell has broken loose. The weather map has been a work by Jackson Pollock: all splatters. It’s impossible to cite a cause for such weirdness across a swath of Dixie, including killer tornadoes in…
Everyone knows the adjective form of “good”: Good tidings. Good cheer. Good grief. But there’s the noun form, too: The condition of good or goodness. The common good. The greater good. So we ask today: Is government any good? To be honest, that’s a silly question, considering the schools and roads it enables, the old-age…
Charles Barkley calls Twitter “a place where fools go to feel important.” He’s talking about you, Donald. You’ve built a fool’s paradise, constructed in planks of 140 words or less. Like many who find that kind of fame salutary, your ambitions are destined to go no further than…
The arrival of the Beatles. The Civil Rights Act. LBJ’s rout of Goldwater. All vied for “Biggest Story” of 1964. But another might have eclipsed them all: the Surgeon General’s report definitively linking smoking with cancer. Why so big? Well, that year four of 10 American adults smoked. Yes, this cancer thing was big news.…