Commentary

As Republicans whipped themselves up into new levels of fury on Tuesday over the execution of a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Democrats were taking victory laps and spelling out their midterm message. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has remained unflappably upbeat about the midterms, now has good reason to tout Democrats’ prospects. Even when other issues have popped up (e.g., impeachment of Trump for inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol), Pelosi has consistently been an advocate for running on “kitchen table” issues, as she regularly put its, such as lowering the cost of health insurance premiums and prescription drugs.

Olivia Newton-John just died. I feel like I honestly loved her, like the famous lyrics to her song. Soon enough, her sweet, innocent face will be added to the grand montage scattered across the screen when the Oscar’s present “In Memoriam,” a digital obituary showing a snippet of creative achievement. But what about when the real celebrities in our lives leave this earth — our parents? As a Gen Xer, I and the majority of my peers are sadly at a stage in our lives where the inevitable is happening — our guardians are dying.

A faddish phrase on the right is something called “the administrative state,” which refers to the federal workforce deputized by Congress to craft and enforce rules over the environment, banking, health care, product safety, mass communications, the power grid, etc. A recent profile of the Claremont Institute — which has the unenviable task of stitching together an intellectual fig leaf for Trumpism — noted that scholars there view our nation’s bureaucrats as a “fourth branch,” effectively overturning the Constitution. For some years, the right has been dressing up this vision of government as a scary horror show.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan carries undeniable risks. Beijing could respond by harassing U.S. Navy ships and aircraft in the area, with a distinct potential for collision or confrontation. It could seize the (largely demilitarized) Taiwanese island of Kinmen — better known to aficionados of the Cold War as Quemoy — which lies just a few miles off the Fujian coast. It could lend Moscow a hand in the war in Ukraine, perhaps by selling it the kinds of precision munitions the Russian military is reportedly running low on.

The small yet critically important Marshyhope Creek on Maryland’s Eastern Shore has been targeted for a massive salmon farming facility that poses a serious threat to its water quality and its habitats. The state’s initial attempt to permit AquaCon’s massive Federalsburg facility is grossly deficient. The start-up Norwegian company’s promises about sustainable indoor salmon farming and the economic benefits it would bring to Maryland have not panned out elsewhere in this industry. Instead, the nascent indoor salmon farming industry has been plagued by mass die-offs of fish, lackluster consumer support, and in one case a catastrophic fire that destroyed an industrial salmon production facility in Demark.