PORTLAND, Ore. -- "Are you kidding?" This is Monica Wehby's amiable response to people who wonder whether she will be able to bear the pressures of office if she wins her race as a Republican Senate candidate. For 17 of her 52 years she has been a pediatric neurosurgeon, holding in steady hands sharp steel and the fate of children's brains. She probably can cope with the strains of legislative life.

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Fifty Julys ago, up the road near San Francisco, in the unfortunately named Cow Palace, the Republican National Convention gave its presidential nomination to Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who knew he would lose: Americans were not going to have a third president in 14 months. Besides, his don't-fence-me-in libertarian conservatism was ahead of its time. His agenda, however, was to change his party's national brand.

WASHINGTON -- Two 5-4 decisions last week on the final decision day of the Supreme Court's term dealt with issues that illustrate the legal consequences of political tactics by today's progressives. One case demonstrated how progressivism's achievement, the regulatory state, manufactures social strife, and can do so in ways politically useful to progressives. The other case arose from government coercion used to conscript unwilling citizens into funding the progressives' party.

WASHINGTON -- Even when Supreme Court decisions are unanimous, the justices can be fiercely divided about fundamental matters, as was demonstrated by two 9-0 rulings last week.

WASHINGTON -- Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo who successfully moved a federal agency to withdraw trademark protections from the Washington Redskins because it considers the team's name derogatory, lives on a reservation where Navajos root for the Red Mesa High School Redskins. She opposes this name; the Native Americans who picked and retain it evidently do not.

WASHINGTON -- What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls "taming the prince" -- making executive power compatible with democracy's abhorrence of arbitrary power -- has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in America than at any time since the founders, having rebelled against George III's unfettered exercise of "royal prerogative," stipulated that presidents "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

WASHINGTON -- The morning after, at breakfast at the Republicans' Capitol Hill Club, Virginia Rep. Robert Goodlatte was, as befits one of Washington's grown-ups, measured in his reaction to what 36,120 Virginia voters did the day before. It would, he says, be wise "to take a step back and a deep breath until we find out how everyone" -- meaning, especially, House Republicans -- "reacts to this." By "this" he indicates, with a wave of a hand, the one-word headline on Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress: "Stunner."

WASHINGTON -- What Winston Churchill said of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles -- that he was a bull who carried his own china shop around with him -- is true of Susan Rice, who is, to be polite, accident prone. When in September 2012 she was deputed to sell to the public the fable that the Benghazi attack was just an unfortunately vigorous movie review -- a response to an Internet video -- it could have been that she, rather than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was given this degrading duty because Rice was merely U.N. ambassador, an ornamental position at an inconsequential institution. Today, however, Rice is Barack Obama's national security adviser, so two conclusions must be drawn.

WASHINGTON -- It is said that the problem with the younger generation -- any younger generation -- is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting. Barack Obama, forever young, has convenient memory loss: It serves his ideology.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Minnesota says it has 10,000 lakes. The state also has, according to Anthony Sanders, "10,000 campaign finance laws." He exaggerates, but understandably. As an attorney for Minnesota's chapter of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, Sanders represents several Minnesotans whose First Amendment rights of free speech and association are burdened by an obviously arbitrary, notably complex and certainly unconstitutional restriction.