It's a quiet, gray morning here in southern Wisconsin. There's almost a foreboding to these gray skies: the far-yet-near conflict in Minneapolis demands that we consider what a de facto occupation by federal law enforcement means for our fellow Americans. More immediately, Minneapolis is a neighbor to Wisconsin, and Milwaukee is

There is an expression from the first half of the twentieth century of disputed attribution to either Peruvian Óscar R. Benavides or Brazilian Getúlio Vargas, in which an autocrat offers "for my friends everything, for my enemies the law." Donald J. Trump has neither Spanish nor Portuguese, but he's inclined by

At The Bulwark, Catherine Rampell lists four key reasons that Taking Venezuela’s Oil Isn’t the Win Trump Claims (sub. req'd). Her four well-supported contentions are that (1) it’s not clear the United States needs more oil, (2) even if we did want more oil, that doesn’t mean we’d

Last night, one read that while Donald J. Trump wanted to control Venezuela's oil industry, he hadn’t considered — of course he hadn’t — how the Venezuelan oil industry could operate profitably under his control: Despite Trump's optimism, oil companies have appeared skeptical of quickly entering, expanding or investing in Venezuela.

It has been nine years, one month, and twenty-five days since Trump’s first election. Later this month, it will be the ninth year since he was first inaugurated. By any calculation, he has battered, besieged, and beleaguered this country; by any measure, he is the most contemptible man to hold federal executive office. Those

Individual rights, freedom from interference, free markets in labor and capital, limited government, property rights, a spontaneous and dynamic social order, and advancement of social justice. Each tenet is presumptively held and supported, within a liberal democratic society that recognizes all persons of equal moral worth.