Our system is a mess, but 90 percent of America has insurance coverage.

I’m just some white guy in California, and nobody in Flint is going to pay any attention to what I’m saying. I don’t blame them. Nor do doctors want to publicly agree with me, because nobody wants to downplay the effects of lead poisoning. I get that too. I can already imagine the number of tweets and emails I’m going to get demanding to know why I think Flint is no big deal.

In other words, in the same way that mass incarceration surged because of a real thing, it's finally starting to ebb because of a real thing: the actual, concrete decline in violent crime that started in the early 90s and which appears to be permanent. America is simply a safer place than it used to be, and looks set to stay that way.

You have to buy off interest groups, compromise your ideals, and settle for half loaves...

Betsy DeVos, for example, has shown that she’s flatly ignorant of an astounding amount of basic education policy. It might be possible to persuade two or three Republicans to oppose her on these grounds - but only if the entire confirmation process isn’t a pure partisan battle.

The reporting is fake. Look, look...You know what it is? Here's the thing. The public isn't - you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don't know if it's true or false because they're not involved.But I'm involved. So I know when you're telling the truth or when you're not. I just see many, many untruthful things.

Note to conservatives: sometimes you just have to give up. Do you really care that much about killing lots of bad guys as opposed to letting them rot in prison for the rest of their lives? It might be time to let go and save your energy for other battles. This one is getting absurd.