Syndicated columns

The worst disaster in the history of the United States Navy only began with the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.

The pertinent and unanswerable question about Turkey is whether the country’s present economic turmoil is an isolated event, mostly confined to Turkey itself, or whether it portends a larger economic convulsion that shakes markets around the world. Among economists and other experts, there’s no consensus. Some foresee contagion: Turkey’s problems will spread. Others envision a one-country economic blip. Which is it?

And now here’s this week’s episode of Great Moments in Black History.

No sooner had I ordered the 2011 book “Less Than Human” for a late-summer read than President Trump called Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” and a “lowlife.” Those two slurs fit nicely into author David Livingstone Smith’s philosophical study of man’s capacity to inflict cruelty by first dehumanizing the “other.”

In 1972, Pope Paul VI warned that “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God.” We see that smoke throughout the report from a Pennsylvania grand jury, which alleges that more than 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children in six Pennsylvania dioceses – including 99 priests from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which was led for 18 years by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, now archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, for having offended thee And I detest, all my sins, because I dread

The most memorable campaign event I attended in 2016 was a rally for John Kasich in Rhode Island. The participants seemed the cream of the middle class – many old-fashioned small-business Republicans as my father was. The Ohio governor spoke on the benefits of not being angry with everyone all the time. His prescriptions were common-sense. (Starting at a community college can make a four-year degree less expensive. That kind of thing.)

How can a president as successful as Donald Trump be so unpopular?

University of Chicago researchers – who clearly have a lot of time on their hands – have found that the use of certain brands and products is a good predictor of your level of affluence. This is an exercise in the obvious when it comes to a $1,000 iPhone. But the same proved true with Ziploc plastic bags, Kikkoman soy sauce and Cascade Complete dishwasher detergent. By this measure, Democratic performance in Ohio’s 12th district special election might be called the Ziploc opening.

When all is said and done, President Trump’s trade war may be fated to fail. There are many reasons why. One is that the target countries – prominently, China, Japan and Germany – won’t accede to his demands. This is already happening. Another threat is a backlash among U.S. firms, hurt by tariffs that raise their products’ prices. This, too, is happening.

Imagine if it emerged that the Republican chairman of the House or Senate intelligence committee had a Russian spy working on their staff. Think it would cause a political firestorm? Well, last week we learned that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had a Chinese spy on her staff who worked for her for 20 years, who was listed as an “office director” on payroll records and served as her driver when she was in San Francisco, all while reporting to China’s Ministry of State Security through China’s San Francisco Consulate. The reaction of the mainstream media? Barely a peep. Feinstein acknowledged the infiltration, but downplayed its significance. “Five years ago the FBI informed me it had concerns that an administrative member of my California staff was potentially being sought out by the Chinese government to provide information” Feinstein said in statement – which means the breach took place while Feinstein was heading the intelligence committee. But, Feinstein insisted, “he never had access to classified or sensitive information or legislative matters” and was immediately fired. In other words: junior staffer, no policy role, no access to secrets, quickly fired – no big deal.

Welcome to the Age of Malware. It promises to be a huge downer and, possibly, a great tragedy. For years, we have regarded personal computers, the internet, smartphones and various digital devices as evidence that America continues to dominate the central new technology of our time.

It’s been policy hereabout to ignore presidential tweets of no national consequence. Whether Donald Trump likes Roseanne or dislikes Rosie matters not. But Trump’s tweets about the catastrophic California fires do.

The behemoths of the internet have shunned Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and paranoia monger. The debate over this cartel-like decision is much larger than Jones now, and it’s taking place mostly on the right.

I got out of bed and followed the smell of bacon and the sound of my parents’ voices to the kitchen. The Eagles were harmonizing from the tape deck, and I could hear laughter mixed with kissing. Following the morning routine of fathers everywhere, mine poured a cup of coffee and flipped through the morning paper. He then noticed the time, grabbed a can of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner and sprayed it directly down his throat.

This is a grim moment for President Trump and his fellow Republicans. A Trump-boosting Republican member of Congress has been indicted on charges of insider trading – from the White House, no less. Trump’s former campaign chairman and another former aide are squabbling in court over who is the bigger criminal. And in a closely watched special congressional race in Ohio – a seat Republicans have held for 35 years in a district Trump won by 11 points and Mitt Romney by 10 – the Republican was clinging to a 0.9-percentage-point lead Wednesday despite Trump’s intervention and vast sums of Republican dollars.

Tesla’s Elon Musk’s recent Twitter stylings indicate that he is getting rattled by persistent investor skepticism about a money-burning, never-profitable enterprise with a market cap of about $60 billion.

“Reality is for people who can’t handle drugs,” according to an old hippie slogan from the ’60s. Today I would update that line to say that reality is for people who can’t handle conspiracy theories. Back when Barack Obama was president, we saw the rise of “birthers,” people who couldn’t wrap their heads around the reality that the nation’s first African-American president was a natural-born citizen.

A good judge is more than someone who simply understands the law. The job requires a keen intellect and an ability to appreciate multiple sides of complex issues. It requires the right temperament – a dedication to fairness and a commitment to leaving personal preferences and politics out of the courthouse. And it requires judicial modesty – an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret and apply the law and the Constitution based on the facts at hand, not to make policy from the bench. As the Senate Judiciary Committee continues to evaluate Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s fitness for the Supreme Court, these are some of the attributes we will explore.