After 10 Glorious Years, Sunshine State News and I Are Passing the Baton

When not furrowing their collective brows about creches and displays of the Ten Commandments here and there, courts often are pondering tangential contacts between the government and religious schools. Courts have held that public money can constitutionally fund the transportation of parochial school pupils to classes -- but not on field trips. It can fund nurses at parochial schools -- but not guidance counselors. It can fund books -- but not maps. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wondered: What about atlases, which are books of maps? On  Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutional significance of this incontrovertible truth: "A scraped knee is a scraped knee whether it happens at a Montessori day care or a Lutheran day care."

The world is agog at Donald Trump's head-snapping foreign policy reversal. He runs on a platform of America First. He renounces the role of world policeman. He excoriates parasitic foreigners that (I paraphrase) suck dry our precious bodily fluids -- and these are allies! On April 4, Trump declared: "I don't want to be the president of the world. I'm the president of the United States. And from now on, it's going to be America First."

Central Florida is in a dry period. Southwest Florida communities affected by the Caloosahatchee River need water from Lake Okeechobee right now.

One hundred years ago, two events three days apart set the 20th century's trajectory. On April 9, 1917, in Zurich, Vladimir Lenin boarded a train. Germany expedited its passage en route to Saint Petersburg -- known as Leningrad from 1924 to 1991 -- expecting him to exacerbate Russia's convulsions, causing Russia's withdrawal from World War I, allowing Germany to shift forces to the Western Front.