Syndicated columns

They stuck with Donald Trump when he was heard, on video, boasting about sexually assaulting women. They stuck with him still when he acknowledged paying hush money to a porn actress who alleged an affair. But this last week, congressional Republicans, determined to discredit the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, hauled in FBI agent Peter Strzok and sought to humiliate him over anti-Trump texts he exchanged with his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

As President Trump put Germany and other allies on notice for the harm they are doing to NATO with their failure to spend adequately on our common defense, Democrats in Washington came to Germany’s defense. “President Trump’s brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement. Sorry, Trump is right. The real embarrassment is that Germany, one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, spends just 1.24 percent of its gross domestic product on defense – in the bottom half of NATO allies. (The U.S. spends 3.5 percent of GDP on its military.) A study by McKinsey & Co. notes that about 60 percent of Germany’s Eurofighter and Tornado fighter jets and about 80 percent of its Sea Lynx helicopters are unusable. According to Deutsche Welle, a German parliamentary investigation found that “at the end of 2017, no submarines and none of the air force’s 14 large transport planes were available for deployment due to repairs,” and “a Defense Ministry paper revealed German soldiers did not have enough protective vests, winter clothing or tents to adequately take part in a major NATO mission.” Not enough tents?

As the senior writer at the National Crime Prevention Council in Washington, D.C., I acquired an intimate knowledge of the principle that you never blame the victim of a crime. Despite the occasional rulings of rogue judges and the bizarre utterances of lawmakers and candidates emboldened by what they hear on talk radio or see on cable TV, it’s pretty much accepted in public discourse that a woman is not to blame for her rape because her skirt was too short or she had too much to drink. A homeowner is not to blame for a theft because an alarm hadn’t been installed. A robbery victim isn’t to blame because the street was dark. The perpetrator is fully held to account for these crimes, not the victim. The news media have reported on the administration’s plans to build tent cities on military bases to house 100,000 detained migrants. Others, fleeing violence at home, have followed established procedures to request asylum but have been arrested and summarily deported instead. President Trump has publicly called these people “animals,” saying, in effect, that they are subhuman. His comment reeks of misplaced blame.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that destruction is the end game of President Donald Trump’s trade war and his increasing belligerence to core U.S. allies such as Canada and Germany: “The best hypothesis is that trade war and destruction of alliances aren’t means to an end – they are ends in themselves. Trump isn’t trying to fix the system, he wants to destroy it, and supposed wrongdoing by others is just an excuse” – July 11 tweet

Even before President Trump announced his nomination Monday of federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill departing Justice Anthony Kennedy’s slot on the Supreme Court, the foul scent of anti-Catholicism began seeping into public commentary. In particular, an article Monday morning that quickly earned ire in the choir came from Daily Beast writer (and Yale Law-educated) Jay Michaelson. While declaring that he didn’t want to engage in anti-papist conspiracies, Michaelson nevertheless proceeded to suggest that an effort is fueled by dark money to name federal judges who “reflect rigid, conservative dogma.” His subject was Leonard Leo, the executive vice president (albeit currently on leave) of the Federalist Society, which has worked closely with the president in creating a list of possible nominees. The well-respected Leo is painted by Michaelson as a sinister, outside secret force pushing Catholics to fill the bench.

In the annals of screwball commentary about media conspiracies, the Washington Examiner’s chief congressional correspondent Susan Ferrechio distinguished herself. She was speaking with host Howard Kurtz on the Fox News program “Media Buzz” on just how former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt found himself without a job. “It was instigated by a desire to take him down because of something that he was doing. He was trying to take apart the Obama-era EPA regulations and he accomplished a lot of that,” said Ferrechio, who didn’t contest the solidity of the investigative reporting on Pruitt. “And I think that fueled the investigatory desires of journalists to try to take him down and outside groups to try to – and people within the EPA to try to take him out for that very reason. He made himself a very easy target. But he would not have been the same level of target if he had a different job within the administration.” Consider what’s being alleged here: that the U.S. news media, which is regarded by President Trump and his allies in the government as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people,” maintains enough credibility within the administration that it can decide on an agenda and jam it through an unwilling and resistant White House. Never has the power of the Fourth Estate been so exalted.

As President Donald Trump zeroes in on his nomination to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, abortion has returned to the forefront of a national debate, and to a degree not seen since the 1980s. The topic never completely goes away, and Americans remain deeply divided on the subject. But abortion’s overall ranking as an issue of importance, compared with others, has risen and fallen over the years. It is resurrected now because Trump’s choice to replace Kennedy could conceivably tilt the court dramatically to the right, and progressives are making the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade their rallying cry to oppose Trump’s pick.

The reasons why patriotic Americans should worry about the president’s two upcoming summits – with NATO leaders and then with Vladimir Putin – were on full view last week. The day after July 4 – a celebration of the Founding Fathers’ rejection of despots – Trump again praised Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Scorning critics’ concerns about the Putin summit, Trump proclaimed at a Montana rally: “Those critics say ‘President Putin is KGB.’ You know what? Putin’s fine.”

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” – Ronald Reagan Now I know how the Gipper felt.

The familiar litany of now-former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s abuse of office is long, bizarre and shameful. But much more damaging were Pruitt’s policies. President Donald Trump’s tweeted praise for the “outstanding job” done by Pruitt was wildly wrong. Trump probably believes that because Pruitt has been doing Trump’s bidding in subverting the EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. One policy after another meant to rein in the excesses of industrial pollution has been targeted and steamrolled to pave the way for corporate capture of the agency. Pruitt’s legally dubious policy rollbacks, if they survive court battles, will put people’s health in danger.

Free speech won; decency lost. This has become such a common observation that it hardly merits a headline. But in a Wisconsin Supreme Court case resolved Friday, the plaintiff was that rarest of victors these days: a conservative professor defending his freedom of speech rights against a university.

The campaign to sway public opinion and President Donald Trump about his choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement is in its final hours. On a closely divided court there is much at stake with this nomination. As a lifelong Republican, I am angry about the unfair public treatment of some of the potential nominees and am ashamed of some of the anonymous sniping coming from my fellow conservatives. I learned as a young lawyer that being a judicial conservative means you do not ignore, redefine or add to the text of the Constitution or the words of a congressional statute to achieve a policy outcome. I learned that a judicial conservative exercises humility, understanding that judges have an important but limited role in the nation’s constitutional scheme. Judicial conservatives do not weigh into issues that are rightfully the responsibility of the government’s elected branches. I learned that a judicial conservative puts aside personal biases and acts with integrity and the courage to do the right thing even if unpopular.

I spent my first 30-plus years in the newspaper business as an editorial writer and later a columnist. Like many readers, I developed views about political reportage in this country, liberal bias and stupid cable news tricks. Since the Las Vegas Review-Journal gave me my first reporting job, White House correspondent, and asked me to keep a foot in the opinion world with a weekly analysis column, those views have pretty much held. What’s changed is what I do and how I am perceived.

“Should I stay or should I go now?” That question, posed by the eminent political philosophers known as The Clash, is one that confronts any Republican with a glimmer of conscience. You used to belong to a conservative party with a white-nationalist fringe. Now it’s a white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe. If you’re part of that fringe, what should you do? Veteran strategist Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign, is the latest Republican to say “no more.” Recently he issued an anguished Twitter post: “29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of the Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life,” he wrote. “Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.”

“Abolish ICE” has become the new rallying cry of the left, which is trying to turn the fury Americans are feeling about the horrors at the Mexican border on the little-understood agency known as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The effort gained a burst of currency when one of its proponents, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, won a stunning victory over House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joseph Crowley in last week’s New York Democratic primary.

Democrats have a new theory for how they can win back Congress and the White House. Just like “soccer moms” helped put Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 1996, and “NASCAR dads” helped George W. Bush win in 2004, Donald Trump, the theory goes, was elected because of “#NeverHillary” voters who didn’t particularly like him but despised her. Axios reports that Democrats are targeting the “20% of Trump’s voters [who] told exit pollsters they didn’t like him” hoping these reluctant Trump voters will help power a “blue wave” in the 2018 midterms and defeat President Trump in 2020. One problem with that theory: The left’s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on Trump are not peeling those voters away from him; they are pushing them further into the president’s camp.

The following editorial appeared in the (Annapolis, Maryland) Capital Gazette:

We’re not here to talk about civility. Granted, that was the inescapable buzzword last week as the left wing rose in pointedly uncivil protest of the evil being perpetrated by the Republican Party and the moral monstrosity who is our president. GOP officials found themselves turned away from one restaurant, heckled in two others and confronted at the movies. The affable actor Seth Rogen told Stephen Colbert how he spurned House Speaker Paul Ryan’s request for a photograph and dressed him down in the process.

When news broke that a man with a shotgun had killed five employees in the Annapolis, Maryland, Capital Gazette newsroom, recent 24/7 media chatter about “civility” suddenly got real. “I thought I was going to die,” intern Anthony Messenger said later on the “Today” show. A colleague used his phone to send a text pleading for help amid the shooting. It read simply, PLEASE HELP US. That tweet quickly went viral.