Ours is, after all, a nation of laws, right? We value justice and we believe everyone has a right to have their day in court. Right?

If Mitch McConnell's Senate can confirm his new nominee for the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump may have completed the capture of all three branches of the U.S. government for the Republican Party. Not bad for a rookie.

When this writer was a military brat living in Germany, his father took the family to visit the memorial at Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazis built.  Although a kid, he was old enough to have a good idea of what the Germans had done and he started asking, “why would the Germans, whom I have experienced as good people, do this?”

Will NAFTA survive? Last week, Mexico elected as president longtime NAFTA critic Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (always called "AMLO") by a wide margin. He promptly had a cordial telephone conversation with longtime NAFTA critic President Donald Trump, who remains U.S. president for the next 30 months and, if re-elected, for all of AMLO's six-year term.

If I worked for Donald Trump and designed a T-shirt that read "I don't believe in borders" in Spanish — and I got a Democratic congressman, say Minnesota's Keith Ellison, to parade in it — I'd probably get a raise. Heck, he might even give me a top agency job with his unspoken permission to abuse the taxpayers.

It was Justice Anthony Kennedy's resignation that did it.

Last week was not, for fans of the Constitution's prohibition of intentional discrimination, such a great week with him. Could a president spew anti-Semitic garbage before and after issuing a travel ban limited to Israel? Could it be worse? It most certainly could.

A while back I wrote a little about British MP Daniel Hannan’s book, “The New Road to Serfdom”. In the book, he cited how the European Union was basically being run by non-elected bureaucrats who have the power to dictate rules and regulations to the nations that are part of the union. I use that book as the “canary in the cage” for where we too, may be headed; the non-elected dictating our future.

"No ban. No wall. No borders at all."

That is the radical rallying cry of the Democratic Socialists of America. Waving desecrated U.S. flags, grubby fists and ratty anarchy banners, DSA's professional protesters are targeting Trump administration officials, threatening immigration enforcement agents, and blockading detention facilities and processing centers nationwide.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to matter. The stock market is wobbly, and Harley-Davidson says its next expansion will be overseas, costing American jobs.

"If you're ... pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart, that's a tough dilemma. ... I'd rather be strong."

Ours is, after all, a nation of laws, right? We value justice and we believe everyone has a right to have their day in court. Right?

If Mitch McConnell's Senate can confirm his new nominee for the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump may have completed the capture of all three branches of the U.S. government for the Republican Party. Not bad for a rookie.

When this writer was a military brat living in Germany, his father took the family to visit the memorial at Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazis built.  Although a kid, he was old enough to have a good idea of what the Germans had done and he started asking, “why would the Germans, whom I have experienced as good people, do this?”

Will NAFTA survive? Last week, Mexico elected as president longtime NAFTA critic Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (always called "AMLO") by a wide margin. He promptly had a cordial telephone conversation with longtime NAFTA critic President Donald Trump, who remains U.S. president for the next 30 months and, if re-elected, for all of AMLO's six-year term.

If I worked for Donald Trump and designed a T-shirt that read "I don't believe in borders" in Spanish — and I got a Democratic congressman, say Minnesota's Keith Ellison, to parade in it — I'd probably get a raise. Heck, he might even give me a top agency job with his unspoken permission to abuse the taxpayers.

It was Justice Anthony Kennedy's resignation that did it.

Last week was not, for fans of the Constitution's prohibition of intentional discrimination, such a great week with him. Could a president spew anti-Semitic garbage before and after issuing a travel ban limited to Israel? Could it be worse? It most certainly could.

A while back I wrote a little about British MP Daniel Hannan’s book, “The New Road to Serfdom”. In the book, he cited how the European Union was basically being run by non-elected bureaucrats who have the power to dictate rules and regulations to the nations that are part of the union. I use that book as the “canary in the cage” for where we too, may be headed; the non-elected dictating our future.

"No ban. No wall. No borders at all."

That is the radical rallying cry of the Democratic Socialists of America. Waving desecrated U.S. flags, grubby fists and ratty anarchy banners, DSA's professional protesters are targeting Trump administration officials, threatening immigration enforcement agents, and blockading detention facilities and processing centers nationwide.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to matter. The stock market is wobbly, and Harley-Davidson says its next expansion will be overseas, costing American jobs.

"If you're ... pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart, that's a tough dilemma. ... I'd rather be strong."

The time has come for Donald Trump's critics to take a much-deserved vacation from all things Donald Trump. The media especially can use this time to work on dropping their compulsion to obsess on every lie, insult and provocation he crafts for their consumption. This invitation extends to participants in social media, which, after all, are media also.

Where is the Democratic Party? The Party of the People is stuck in the status quo — the still reigning, old-line hierarchy of the Democratic party is unwilling to just be dedicated to well, to the democratic interests of its own political base. People know from real-life experience that the economy has been rigged against them for the benefit of the uber-rich and the political system has been totally corrupted by the bipartisan pay-to-play ethic that protects the status quo from interference by us commoners. While Republicans are a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary, unabashedly dedicated the narrow interests of the moneyed elites, the Dems' congressional elders, key party officials, entrenched consultants and corporate funders continue to push bland, business-as-usual candidates running on a pusillanimous policy agenda of vague "reforms" that don't actually change anything. Then the party establishment wonders why such people stray or stay home in November!

"It is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," says former first lady Laura Bush of the Trump administration policy of "zero tolerance," under which the children of illegal migrants are being detained apart from their parents.

The woman soon to be Rudolph Giuliani's third ex-wife is not the most sympathetic of victims. Judith Nation cavorted openly with Giuliani while the New York mayor was still living with his second wife and their two children.

It’s a safe assumption that most Americans have lived their life trusting our government to abide by the laws enacted to guide all the people inside and outside of government. However, in a relative flash of time that trust has gone. We have seen some government leaders “weaponize” the embedded bureaucracy for political reasons. And we have seen the embedded bureaucracy, the “deep state”, do likewise. For example:

"The public will no doubt be surprised at the economic importance of this industry as (we measure) the impact of activities like boating, fishing, RVing, hunting, camping, hiking and more."

"I also have a dream."

This rallying cry, handwritten on a simple white placard held up by an Asian-American mom at a protest this week against liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to radically transform New York City's public schools, says it all. A new civil rights struggle in education has exploded — yet the national media and the usual celebrity voices for equality and justice are nowhere to be found.

Question: If you inject a stream of raw ignorance into a vat of gaseous arrogance, then jolt the mixture with 1,000 megawatts of malevolence ... what does it produce? Answer: Donald Trump's Executive Order of April 12.

At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as "the piggy bank that everybody is robbing."

That was quite a show Donald Trump put on in Canada. Insulting our closest friends and trading partners while sucking up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin — well, that got people's attention. As Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, tweeted, "Just tell us what Vladimir has on you. Maybe we can help."

"Though New York City has one of the most segregated schools systems in the country," writes Elizabeth Harris of The New York Times, until now, Mayor Bill de Blasio "was all but silent on the issue." He was "reluctant even to use the word 'segregation.'"

It was John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, who is responsible for the first quote that comes to mind this week. The baron died more than a hundred years ago, but one person will come to many minds as you read his words:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority."

New Hampshire is a great place to live, work, and raise a family, but there is always more that can be done to help those who are struggling. This morning, I will join patient advocacy groups, doctors, hospital officials, members of law enforcement, lawmakers and patients in Laconia to sign two important pieces of legislation that are critical to the future of our state’s health care system. The first, HB-1791, will help substantively lower the cost of prescription drugs. The other, SB-376, seeks to proactively address the growing threat of methamphetamines in New Hampshire.

"Across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions and the most supportive of authoritarianism." So wrote political researcher David Adler in The New York Times after analyzing responses to two multi-country surveys on values.

Roseanne Barr's divorce from civilization started 28 years ago. Given the honor of singing the national anthem at a San Diego Padres-Cincinnati Reds game, she shrieked the words and, upon concluding, spit at the ground and scratched her crotch. All choreographed for a national TV audience.

After being sworn in for a fourth term, Vladimir Putin departed the Kremlin for Annunciation Cathedral to receive the televised blessing of Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch and his priests in sacred vestments surrounded Putin, who, standing alone, made the sign of the cross.

We keep hearing that Christians, especially conservative Evangelical Christians, are under attack being “persecuted.” Of course, we also keep hearing that those in charge of this anti-Christian persecution are liberals, progressives, socialists, Democrats or all of the above.

In the fierce labor wars of the last century, industrial barons employed Pinkertons and other goons to bloody the heads of laborers or simply gun down those struggling for a share of economic and political power. It was brutal, but organized workers persevered and eventually gained a share of economic and political power. From their sweat and blood, America's middle class flowered.

Educrat (ED-yoo-krat) noun, usually pejorative. A government school official or administrator whose primary function is to spend tax dollars telling other parents what to do with their children.

Romper, a website for young mothers, asks a good question. Is crushing student debt a big factor in millennials' not having children? Its answer is yes.

It's the craziest thing. Factory towns that bled both jobs and people still have a fine housing stock, cheap for lack of demand. Booming tech centers, meanwhile, attract battalions of newcomers despite their soaring housing costs and growing congestion.

There are times when there is so much important news happening at the same time that it’s hard to decide what story most people would be interested in. For example, while the progress towards negotiation with North Korea has been going well, today we heard that the North just tossed in a monkey wrench, demanding that the scheduled military exercises by the U.S. and South Korea not take place.

Need more evidence that there are two Americas? Here: Left-wing hatred of Melania Trump is inversely proportional to flyover admiration for the first lady.

Get ready, America — here we go ... to war! This kind of war is an affront to the values that most of us hold dear, and this war is truly nasty and evil: a war on the poor.

For Bibi Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister save only founding father David Ben-Gurion, it has been a week of triumph.

Everywhere I read, the doom and gloom of the Left and the paranoia of the Right are evident. One percent of the Left wants confiscation of guns that terrify them and fifty percent of the Right believes the entire Left wants to take away all their guns.

None of it is true.

Brushing aside the anguished pleas of our NATO allies, President Trump Tuesday contemptuously trashed the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.

What was Eric Schneiderman thinking? That as the very ambitious attorney general of New York, he could turn himself into the patron saint of the #MeToo movement while physically abusing women, as four women have alleged?

The impossibly fickle, selective and whimsical rules of cultural appropriation are hard to keep straight.

For Donald Trump's critics, it's tempting to jump on every juicy reveal regarding the president's sex romps. The swirl of accusations, denials, contradictions, backstabbing and confusion does keep us entertained. Today's story revolves around the hush money sent to porn actress Stormy Daniels. And the unconfirmed report of a tawdry frolic with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel — what Trump calls the "golden shower thing" — still hovers.

It is getting downright upsetting to see the number of people who are so infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) that they are knowingly or unknowingly willing to put our Republic at risk. And no, that is not overstating the situation.

Isaac Newton's third law of motion states that for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It can operate in politics, too. For example, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith recently wrote, "It is part of Trump's evil genius that he elevates himself by inducing his critics to behave like him."

"America First" would be a harmless phrase were it not loaded with dark undertones. It harks back to the America First Committee, a group advocating U.S. neutrality in World War II. Some members were Nazi sympathizers, while others simply wanted to keep America out of another bloody conflict in Europe. The attack on Pearl Harbor put the committee out of business.

It was Associate Justice Elena Kagan, former solicitor general, former Harvard Law School dean and brilliant liberal, who raised the question during Wednesday's United States Supreme Court argument on the latest travel ban. It's the same question I used to raise with my students whenever they jumped too quickly to the conclusion that a restriction imposed by us against them was justified. It's the question my mother spent most of her life worrying about, and with reason: What if it were the Jews?

Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, billed as a celebration of the First Amendment and a tribute to journalists who "speak truth to power," has to be the worst advertisement in memory for our national press corps.

Recently, the N.H. Legislature voted to join the community of other civilized states and countries and abolish capital punishment. Unfortunately, Governor Sununu promised to veto this bill. We should encourage the governor to change his mind or, failing that, encourage our legislators to override any veto.

Seventy-three years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on his trip back from the Yalta conference with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, held his last meeting with foreign leaders, aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal's Great Bitter Lake. One was with the desert warrior king, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who sailed in with seven live sheep and a tent to sleep in on deck.

Many Americans are reluctant to accept that coup conspiracies are part of country's history. We tend believe that plots to overthrow the government are totally foreign to our national character. But we do do coups. In fact, the country itself was founded on an armed coup to replace the legal ruler, King George III, with a gang of revolutionary upstarts. One coup that most of us haven't heard of is The Wall Street Putsch of 1933. The financial establishment — along with its media and political henchmen — rushed out to bury the story and protect the gentlemen of Wall Street implicated in the part. It's a heck of a story about capitalist skullduggery by a few Lords of Wealth trying to overthrow the government and enthrone a fascist regime friendly to them.

Before President Trump trashes the Iran nuclear deal, he might consider: If he could negotiate an identical deal with Kim Jong Un, it would astonish the world and win him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bernie Sanders is back in the news, showing us all both his good side and the bad. Let's start with the good.

The time has come for Donald Trump's critics to take a much-deserved vacation from all things Donald Trump. The media especially can use this time to work on dropping their compulsion to obsess on every lie, insult and provocation he crafts for their consumption. This invitation extends to participants in social media, which, after all, are media also.

Where is the Democratic Party? The Party of the People is stuck in the status quo — the still reigning, old-line hierarchy of the Democratic party is unwilling to just be dedicated to well, to the democratic interests of its own political base. People know from real-life experience that the economy has been rigged against them for the benefit of the uber-rich and the political system has been totally corrupted by the bipartisan pay-to-play ethic that protects the status quo from interference by us commoners. While Republicans are a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary, unabashedly dedicated the narrow interests of the moneyed elites, the Dems' congressional elders, key party officials, entrenched consultants and corporate funders continue to push bland, business-as-usual candidates running on a pusillanimous policy agenda of vague "reforms" that don't actually change anything. Then the party establishment wonders why such people stray or stay home in November!

"It is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," says former first lady Laura Bush of the Trump administration policy of "zero tolerance," under which the children of illegal migrants are being detained apart from their parents.

The woman soon to be Rudolph Giuliani's third ex-wife is not the most sympathetic of victims. Judith Nation cavorted openly with Giuliani while the New York mayor was still living with his second wife and their two children.

It’s a safe assumption that most Americans have lived their life trusting our government to abide by the laws enacted to guide all the people inside and outside of government. However, in a relative flash of time that trust has gone. We have seen some government leaders “weaponize” the embedded bureaucracy for political reasons. And we have seen the embedded bureaucracy, the “deep state”, do likewise. For example: