Columns

WASHINGTON -- We could wearily shrug, say "Oh, well," and economize waste and annoyance by just building the proposed $142 million Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial. But long after its perpetrators are gone, it would squat there, representing Washington at its worst and proving that we have forgotten how to nurture our national memory with intelligent memorials.

U.S. Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., needed some conservative help as he runs for the U.S. Senate in 2016 -- and on Wednesday, he got just that. Jolly’s left flank isn’t exactly secure in a Republican primary. Soon after upsetting former state CFO Alex Sink in a special election last year, Jolly announced that he supported same-sex marriage. This quickly drew fire from the right, including from conservatives who backed Jolly over Sink. More recently, Jolly has teamed with U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, D-Fla., to extend the federal drilling ban in the eastern part of the Gulf even as conservatives push for more energy exploration. 

"Trump's immigration proposals are as dangerous as they are stunning," railed amnesty activist Frank Sharry.

Hypocrisy yet again is the subplot to a Democratic Party drama, this time involving the story I wrote about late Sunday, the firing/layoff/pink-slip dismissal of an African-American, Broward Democratic Executive Committee Operations Director Michael Howson.

In 1935 George Dangerfield published "The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914," a vivid account of how Britain's center-left Liberal Party, dominant for a century, collapsed amid conflicts it could not resolve. 

Welcome to The Dean's List -- an Ed Dean-style look at who Florida's political achievers were (and weren't) in the last seven days.

Michael Howson, former operations director of the Democratic Executive Committee of Broward County, has told party insiders he is days away from filing a race discrimination lawsuit against the DEC for firing him because he is black. News of Howson's situation late last week widened the rift between Broward's black community and the party. And now Howson's response -- his decision to fight back -- is spreading quickly through the county.

In the Cleveland debate, Donald Trump refused to commit to support whomever the Republican Party nominates in 2016. 

August is traditionally a vacation month, and East Coast elites, following European tradition, are thick on the ground in the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard (the Obamas' choice) and Nantucket. 

Mrs. Wade, my seventh-grade English teacher, had that special gift. Nearly six decades have slipped away since I sat in her classroom in Simsbury, Conn., and by now there isn't much that stands out about that year in school.

This week, news emerged that Warren G. Harding had, in fact, fathered a child with Nan Britton, a far younger woman with whom he had an affair during his rise to power and during his presidency.

Both presidential nomination contests having been scrambled by recent events -- the FBI taking control of Hillary Clinton's private email server and a raucous, roiling GOP debate -- the third edition of the Racing Form is herewith rushed into print.

Anybody else remember what the EMILY's List people told Nan Rich when she asked for their support running for governor of Florida against Charlie Crist?

Outsiders are starting to find the 2016 presidential election to be fertile ground, which is bad news for Jeb Bush. This week, the former Florida governor weighed into foreign affairs, blaming the Obama administration -- and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton -- for the current mess in the Middle East as Islamic State (IS) terrorism further destabilizes the region. 

WASHINGTON -- In every town large enough to have two traffic lights there is a bar at the back of which sits the local Donald Trump, nursing his fifth beer and innumerable delusions. Because the actual Donald Trump is wealthy, he can turn himself into an unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate. It is his right to use his riches as he pleases. His squalid performance and its coarsening of civic life are costs of freedom that an open society must be prepared to pay.