The English language is not always the President's friend.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.

Stalin's henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.

Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a 'living Constitution.' They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.

Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.

An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press.