Operation SafeDRIVE and the Quiet Return of an Old Idea: Standards Aren’t Optional

//
(Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

There’s a certain American phrase we’ve stopped saying out loud: standards. Not preferences. Not vibes. Standards. And when you drop them — quietly, bureaucratically, with a shrug — you don’t get a gentler society. You get chaos with paperwork. You get tragedies no one wants to own. That’s why this week’s news from federal transportation officials is so welcome. In a three-day, 26-state enforcement surge — Operation SafeDRIVE — inspectors conducted more than 8,200 checks and took 704 drivers out of service. They pulled 1,231 vehicles off the road as unfit. They made 56 arrests. And they cited roughly 500

A Justice at the Grammys and a Senator’s Unease: Blackburn Wants KBJ Probe

//
(Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

There is a certain gravity that comes with the Supreme Court. It is not written down anywhere, but Americans feel it instinctively. The justices wear black robes, not costumes. They speak in opinions, not punchlines. Which is why Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s letter to Chief Justice John Roberts landed this week with a thud. Blackburn urged Roberts to open an investigation into Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson after Jackson attended the Grammy Awards on Sunday — an event that mixed celebrity, politics, and sharp anti-ICE rhetoric. Jackson’s presence was not accidental. She had been nominated for a Grammy for narrating the audiobook

Life Plus Seven: The Judge, the Plot, and the Thin Line Between Order and Chaos

//
(Photo by NICOLAS GARCIA/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images)

It is a strange thing, the way America now keeps having to look at the unthinkable and call it by its proper name. Ryan Routh was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison plus seven years for his 2024 assassination attempt against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club in Florida. There are people who will insist this is just another case, another file, another defendant. It isn’t. It’s the modern American sickness — politics not as argument, but as extermination fantasy. The sentence follows Routh’s September conviction on five federal counts, including attempting to assassinate a

The Clintons and the Clock: At Last, A Deposition Date With the Oversight Committee

//
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

After months of lawyerly jousting and slow-walking, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will sit for filmed, closed-door, transcribed depositions before the House Oversight Committee at the end of this month. Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., says Hillary Clinton will appear Feb. 26, with Bill Clinton following Feb. 27, under the same terms. Both sessions will be recorded, Comer’s statement said. This is the part of Washington where the calendar becomes a weapon. For weeks, the former first couple and the GOP-led committee haggled over whether they would testify, where, and on what conditions, as the

1 2 3 … 616