Syndicated columns

So what exactly should we do when people consider extant art racist? In 2020, the Vermont Law School decided that the solution was to use acoustic tiles to cover a pair of murals. The U.S. Court of Appeals recently rejected the claim by artist Samuel Kerson that the decision violated his rights under the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act. But even if the court’s interpretation was correct and federal law doesn’t protect a work from being covered, the ruling shouldn’t be the end of the matter; not, at least, for those who love art.

Major Republican donors have questions for presidential candidate Tim Scott’s campaign about a potential political liability, according to reporting by Axios: He doesn’t have a wife. The U.S., after all, hasn’t had a single president in 139 years.

When I’m around young adults I like to ask them how they are thinking about the big commitments in their lives: what career to go into, where to live, whom to marry. Most of them have thought a lot about their career plans. But my impression is that many have not thought a lot about how marriage will fit into their lives.

President Biden must be amazed at his good fortune.

A year ago, defying predictions that President Joe Biden’s agenda was dead in the water, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is sort of the Holy Roman Empire of legislation – as in being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. That is, it isn’t actually about reducing inflation; it’s mainly a climate bill, using tax credits and subsidies to encourage the transition to a low-emission economy.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign may be floundering as he struggles to win over Republican voters with his deadpan robotic demeanor, and he may be shuffling campaign staff like he’s taking a mulligan, but the damage he did to Florida to get himself to this moment is still rippling through the state.

The best way to think about Georgia’s sprawling indictment against Donald Trump and his allies is that it is a case about lies. It’s about lying, conspiring to lie and attempting to coax, coerce and cajole others into lying. Whereas the attorney general of Michigan just brought a case narrowly focused on the alleged fake electors in her state (Trump is not a defendant in that one), and special counsel Jack Smith brought an indictment narrowly focused on the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has brought a case about the entire conspiracy, from start to finish, and targeted each person subject to her jurisdiction for each crime committed in her jurisdiction.

The Alabama Sweet Tea Party.

By Mark Gongloff

The preposterous No Labels scheme to run a third-party candidate has gotten even more outlandish. In the wake of the devastating indictment of defeated former president Donald Trump for the phony elector plot, we can see more clearly than ever that the No Labels gambit amounts to a do-over for the likes of Trump and unindicted co-conspirator John Eastman.

Hunter Biden has gone from being an embarrassment to a real problem for his father.

The federal indictment issued this week against Donald Trump for his efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election has a literary quality to it. It reads like a movie script.

Last week, a 15-year-old Black girl named Janiya Duffie went missing in Georgia. She was last spotted on a street named Tranquility Loop in the town of Lovejoy on July 19. She was wearing blue shorts and a red jacket. She is 5-foot-7; she weighs about 140 pounds. If you know anything of her disappearance or whereabouts, the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office is waiting for your call.