12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
APQA police chief from a
small New Hamp shire town
stripped to his underwear
and boots and marched into
a snowstorm after being
ordered by the town council
to immediately turn in his
badge and uniform. Chief
Richard Lee said he didn’t
want to disobey a lawful
order after learning that
the Croy don Town Coun cil
had opted to eliminate his
one-man department. “I sat
down in the chair, took off my
boots, took off my pants, put
those in the chair, and put my
boots back on, and walked
out the door,” Lee said. He
walked through the storm for
almost a mile before his wife
picked him up.
QA botched
building demoli-
tion briefly cre-
ated what quickly
became known
as the “Leaning
Tower of Dallas.”
Crowds of selfie
seekers and onlookers flocked
to the site of the 11-story,
former Affiliated Computer
Services building after a con-
trolled explosion left its core
elevator and stairwell shaft
still standing, but leaning
precariously to one side. “It’s
just like the Leaning Tower of
Pisa,” said Kelley Breeding
after taking a photograph that
made it appear as if she were
holding the building up with
her hands. “Now we have
our own.” The phenomenon
didn’t last. A wrecking ball
brought the tower down.
QAn Australian man is being
hailed as a hero after using
CPR to revive a gecko who
was drowning in his beer.
The customer, known to his
friends as “Slab,” thought
at first that the lizard was
a prank perpetrated by the
Amble Inn’s staff, but after
the bartenders denied it, he
leaped into action, perform-
ing chest compressions and
blowing air into the gecko’s
mouth until it began to stir.
“Look at this,” Slab shouted
as the gecko ran up his arm.
“I saved his life!”It must be true...
I read it in the tabloidsThe vice presidency “has miraculously become Washington’s second
most desirable job,” said Jack Shafer. Instead of standing silently behind
the president for four years, withering away in a “political dead end,”
the next VP has a significant chance of becoming president before the
2020 term ends. I’m not suggesting the four leading contenders for the
top job—Donald Trump (73), Bernie Sanders (78), Michael Bloomberg
(78), and Joe Biden (77)—are “likely to croak tomorrow,” but both par-
ties must take the “actuarial odds” seriously. Trump is clinically obese,
eats poorly, had a mysterious, rushed visit to the hospital in November,
and has provided only partial medical records. Sanders recently had “an
onstage heart attack” and refuses to release his records. Biden had two
life-threatening aneurysms in 1988 that required brain surgery to correct.
Bloomberg had two stents inserted in his heart two decades ago. Faced
with the high likelihood of nominating “a geezer,” the Democrats can’t
pick a running mate just “to satisfy the geographic, gender, and ethnic
needs of the ticket.” They need someone, maybe Stacey Abrams, 46, the
rising star from Georgia, who could handle a “promotion by death.”Why did President Trump last week pardon a rogue’s gallery of white-
collar criminals? asked Joel Stein. Many people assume he commuted
former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s sentence and pardoned junk
bond king Michael Milken, tax cheat Bernard Kerik, and others simply
because they were friends of friends or because he owed them a favor.
But in Trump’s worldview, “cheating is irrelevant” and the white-collar
crooks he pardoned had been unfairly persecuted for doing “what ev-
eryone else does.” If corrupt politicians land in jail, he thinks, it’s only
because “corrupt politicians on the opposing side are picking on them
for their own gain.” Indeed, Blagojevich is calling himself a “political
prisoner,” even though he was caught, among other crimes, demanding
that the CEO of a children’s hospital give his campaign $50,000 or see
its public funding cut off. Sadly, 75 percent of Americans also believe
government corruption is “widespread,” even though international
agencies rate us among the least corrupt countries. It’s clear who benefits
from accepting corruption as normal and inevitable—“the strongmen
trampling democracy around the globe,” like Trump. “If everyone is
corrupt, you go with the toughest corrupt guy on your team.”Bernie Sanders’ proposal to ban fracking should “scare the dickens”
out of Amer i cans, said the Washington Examiner. That technique
for extracting oil and natural gas from underground rock has tripled
the amount the U.S. can produce, “making the country energy
independent”— indeed, an energy exporter. It’s also created more than
1 million jobs in Penn syl vania, Ohio, Mich i gan, and other states Demo-
crats hope to win in Novem ber, dramatically lowered heating prices for
tens of millions of Amer i cans, and cut utilities’ reliance on dirty coal for
electricity generation by half. As a direct result of natural gas replacing
coal, the U.S. is one of the few nations in the world whose carbon di-
oxide emissions are in decline, having fallen 14 percent since their peak
in 2007. With new technology now being tested, fracking can be made
cleaner still, and play a critical role in our country’s move toward zero
emissions. San ders and Rep. Alex an dria Ocasio- Cortez, who introduced
a fracking-ban bill in the House, would rather rely on Soviet-style “cen-
tral planning” and put the government in charge of all energy policy—
and of the economy itself. “Every historical attempt” to run economies
this way has ended in failure. So would this one.Why VP
choice will
be critical
Jack Shafer
Politico.com
The cost of
banning
fracking
Editorial
Washington Examiner
Making
corruption
a norm
Joel Stein
Los Angeles Times
“People may think of authoritarian nations in Cold War terms, as states with
bombastic leaders who grant themselves extravagant titles and weigh their
chests down with meaningless medals. These are nations without legislatures, without courts,
with populations cowed by armies of secret police. This is not how many authoritarian nations
work today. Most have elections, legislatures, courts; they possess all the trappings of democracy.
But the democratic institutions that authoritarian nations retain have little power to check the
executive, either because they are under regime control or because they are cowed or co-opted
into submission.” Adam Serwer in The AtlanticViewpoint