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.

Actually, I think we all understand just fine why Donald Trump is president: because he ran a racist, boorish, epically mendacious campaign and Republicans all decided to go along with it. And even that wouldn’t have been enough if Trump hadn’t gotten some additional help from his pals James Comey and Vladimir Putin.

Of course the system can be changed. Why would I bother spending 14 years of my life blogging if I didn't believe that?

Because prison sentences in America tend to be long, de-incarceration lags falling crime rates by a fair amount, but eventually it does catch up.

Smart hiring managers in the modern world should be asking, “How long can you concentrate on a task before you have to take a break?” I wonder how many of them do?

I don't support everything Bernie Sanders supports, but I support most of it: universal health care, reining in Wall Street, fighting climate change, reversing the growth of income inequality, and so forth. If we could accomplish all this in a couple of years, I'd be delighted. But we can't.

The younger you are, the more likely you are to have grown up in a (mostly) lead-free environment, and that means you're less likely to have committed a felony or gotten sent to prison.