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One in, one out. Loretta Lynch, the incoming, and Eric Holder, the outgoing, Attorneys General This morning, in his Weekly Address , the President complained that congress is not running smoothly. Loretta Lynch, his nominee to be the next Attorney General,  the president says, should be allowed a confirmation vote by the Republican controlled Senate. Lynch would replace Eric Holder, the scandal ridden Attorney General, who has resigned effective upon the office being filled by a new appointee. Holder has been held in contempt of congress for previous mistakes. Mrs. Lynch would be the first black woman to be made Attorney General of the United States, and has a long and distinguished history as a prosecutor. So it could be understandable why some would think that she should not, as is now the case, have been waiting for confirmation to her position longer than the last five appointees combined. Democrats are outraged, or at least say they are, by this turn of events. With Senator Di...

Yesterday in Cleveland, Barak Obama was speaking to a civic group, and he had a suggestion which he admitted would be hard to implement, but would be “fun” to try. The President’s big idea? Make voting mandatory, presumably for all people over 18 in good health and sound of mind. This is not the first time this idea of making everyone for someone, even if its themselves, every election unless they can prove they were dying of cancer or something, has come into the public debate in recent years. The president reminded everyone that the people who usually do not vote in politics are the mainly the minorities, the less educated, in fact, the overall less privileged, who tend historically to vote more Democratic. And of course, it would be harder for a few men like the Koch brothers or George Soros to buy an election if everybody voted. And the president is right, voter turnout is a problem, in last year’s midterm elections, just around 36% of Americans voted. And in 2012 when we ...

The panel Terre Haute, Indiana -My mother likes to visit libraries, and, I found out recently, library websites. On one of them, she discovered a notice that at one particular library here in Indiana, there was going to be a “Cracker Barrel Session” where you sit around and ask state congressmen questions. I was expecting a quiet, almost sleepy little session which no one, including the congressmen, were overly interested in. I was wrong. When we arrived, underneath a tent outside, a Democratic State Senator was screaming about how our Governor Mike Pence, a man who is widely popular here, and about whom some are whispering for the presidency, was shutting down public schools. (He’s not; he’s simply allowing people to go to the school of their choice, or homeschool.) It seems the teachers association, along with the labor unions, had gathered together to do their best to annoy the four Republican congressmen who were there for the session, and cheer for the two Democrats. The story m...