Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.

Some people, such as the unemployed coal miners and steelworkers of the Rust Belt, have been left behind by growing prosperity.

Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender - and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.

Logic, fact, morality, legality, ideology: All of it is irrelevant in understanding the Party of Trump. Republicans have made crystal clear that nothing matters to them other than partisanship.

Here is where you get into the danger zone, when the government official starts talking about U.S. government business and then also talking about what personal business favors they might want. And when the conversation goes down that road, it does risk crossing the line into solicitation of a bribe.

Whatever the economy needs to maintain itself, the government will do it.

One of the worst of errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a Government has no right to interfere for any purpose except for that of affording protection.

But those who believe that what our people desire is big government are living in a state of delusion.