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Halftime show is NFL’s decision

National Columnists

The Super Bowl is one of the highlights of the sporting calendar, attracting millions of viewers worldwide year after year, and sparking the beginning of the long and difficult football-free season where we must survive on a meager diet of non-contact sports such as basketball and soccer. But for certain non-sports fans whose sole joy in life is found in complaining about anything and everything online, the Super Bowl has nothing to do with football and everything to do with the halftime show. This year, too many commentators went into overdrive in their attempt to spark ...

Dow 50,000: Supply-side miracle

National Columnists

When I first arrived in Washington in 1982, the Dow Jones hit a low of 800. You may not believe that, so feel free to look it up. If anyone had predicted that in a little more four decades the Dow would surpass 50,000, they might have been admitted into a mental institution. But U.S. stocks have grown 60-fold (not counting inflation). Even accounting for inflation, the Dow is up about 12-fold. We have lived through the greatest period of wealth creation in perhaps the history of the world. No other nation has come even close in modern times. Consider that American publicly ...

AI companion apps exacerbate teen mental health concerns

National Columnists

Troubling stories about dangerous encounters with chatbots continue to surface in the news, with two recent reports from NPR that focused on teen suicide and mental health worsening due to people seeking "sentient" relationships with artificial intelligence. The teen suicide story ran last September, featuring grieving parents, Matthew and Maria Raine, and Megan Garcia, who shared heartbreaking ordeals of their sons taking their lives after engaging with chatbots. The Raines' son, Adam, committed suicide in April of last year, and they had no idea of his involvement with ChatGPT. In ...

Feeling insecure? You may be on to something

National Columnists

Groundhog Day's furry forecaster Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of wintry weather. What if we asked Phil to apply his insights to the frigid job market? He might answer the way an alarmed groundhog does, with chattering teeth, and then squeak, "Wheet! Wheet! Cold days are coming for American jobseekers, and they'll last a lot longer than six weeks." Economists are using the term "deep freeze" to describe the current job outlook. These are strange times. The official unemployment rate of 4.45% is not a distressing number, but the reasons behind it are worrisome. Many ...

Japanese lesson provided for troubled Britain

National Columnists

The contrast between America's great island allies on opposite ends of the world couldn't be more drastic. Japan has just given its commonsense conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a two-thirds supermajority in the national legislature's Lower House; her Liberal Democratic Party took the highest proportion of seats of any party since World War II. It's an enormous vote of confidence not only in Takaichi's economic agenda but also for her willingness to get tough with China. Beijing's mouthpieces have called Takaichi an "evil witch," with China's consul general in ...

Redistricting scheme done in name of ‘democracy’

National Columnists

Virginia is the new Illinois. The practice of drawing partisan districts is named after Elbridge Gerry, the 19th century Massachusetts governor. Even he might blush at the extreme gerrymander that Democrats in the commonwealth are pushing. They want to go from a congressional delegation with 6 Democrats and 5 Republicans -- broadly representing the partisan makeup of the state -- to a 10-1 Democratic advantage. In other words, purplish Virginia would have a congressional delegation that, in percentage terms, would be more Democratic than that of Illinois; Virginia's delegation would ...