Virtually alone among major world economies, the United States has a debt ceiling which limits how much money the government can borrow to pay the bills it has already incurred. From the time Congress created the debt limit in 1917 to simply the massive borrowing need to fund the U.S effort in World War I […]

To my Republican friends willing to trigger a global economic catastrophe by refusing to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling, let’s engage in a little thought exercise. Imagine for the moment that Donald Trump actually won reelection in November 2020. (That shouldn’t be hard, given polling that shows that 66% of Republicans already wrongly believe […]

In its September 30 story titled “‘Mandates Are Working’: Employer Ultimatums Lift Vaccination Rates, So Far,” the New York Times reported some of the best COVID news for Americans since the delta variant first exploded here in July. In a nutshell, employer mandates implemented by states like New York and California as well as by […]

Sometimes a little historical context can put current events in perspective. Two weeks after the fall of Kabul, the United States successfully extracted over 120,000 Americans and Afghans from the capital. But thirteen American servicemen and women were killed in a terrorist attack during the high-risk mission to protect the ongoing airlift. Two weeks after […]

It’s amazing how America’s national security landscape changed in just four years. With the Islamic State on the ropes after the fall of Mosul, in February 2017 defense expert Andrew Exum proclaimed, “Donald Trump will defeat ISIS and it will mostly be due to the work of his predecessor.” But with Trump’s successor just weeks […]