Rex Smith

Some people you might consider experts believe we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, with the leading Republican candidate for president openly talking about authoritarian actions he would take if he returns to the White House, and America shrinking from the task of protecting democracy in Europe.

Last month I participated in a seminar on “Why the Separation of Powers Matters.” What fun, right? Separation of powers is a topic that you just know is important but, given how short life surely is, that was an event that you might find an excuse to avoid. Still, there’s a lot to be said about the way our Constitution divides power among Congress and the President and the Supreme Court. It's not at all boring – really!

A lot of us have been nervous since House Republicans elected an obscure congressman from Louisiana, Mike Johnson, to be Speaker – second in line to the presidency, you know. Johnson seems to be a decent enough fellow, in the sense that he’s friendly and seemingly upright in his personal life. And he is deeply religious. And that’s just the thing: He personifies the gap between the rise of moralizing in political rhetoric and the decline of morality in political practice.

During a congressional debate in 1860, as pressure simmered toward the Civil War, the House of Representatives got disorderly. An anti-slavery Massachusetts Republican, named Charles Train, was finding it hard to deliver his remarks amid pestering by a pro-slavery Alabama Democrat, George Houston. Congressman Train gamely persisted, but when Houston, the pro-slavery guy, interrupted, and said, “You are a lying scoundrel,” well, then the situation became too much for those “gentlemen,” as members of Congress refer to themselves. Proceedings stopped abruptly, until, finally, the Alabamian apologized.

Pill bottles are a pain. In our house, encounters with over-the-counter medications typically involve kitchen shears, a steak knife and some colorful curses aimed at Big Pharma. There are triple-sealed containers to be cut, plastic shrink bands to be sliced, heat-sealed flats to be lacerated.

A rare event happened in the political world last week: a sitting member of Congress admitted that he was wrong about something – that he had cast a vote the week before that he regrets.

It’s a mark of how ugly American conservatism has become that people with a sense of history are nostalgic for Barry Goldwater. I’ve been thinking about Goldwater lately since even before Republicans elevated a right-wing Christian nationalist named Mike Johnson to the role of Speaker of the House.

You never know what’s going to grab a kid’s attention, but I actually think I got interested in politics because I liked the buttons and bumper stickers. Campaign swag seemed fun to me. Whatever started it, I became kind of a politics nerd, and it has stuck.

Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced recently that they were able to capture a phrase from a Pink Floyd song from signals picked up by electrodes attached to the brains of 29 patients at Albany Medical Center. Think of it like this: The patients’ brain waves became a cover band for Pink Floyd, recreating the music they were hearing, and the electrodes beamed it out.

Imagine my surprise, a few weeks back, to find a crowd on hand as I was wheeled into an operating room at a big regional hospital. Until that moment, it hadn’t struck me that a major procedure was at hand, though I guess you might count anything involving heart repair and general anesthesia as major. I just hadn’t expected the dozen or so physicians and nurses who were suddenly swarming my gurney. So I looked up and said, “Thank you all for being here,” not intending it to be funny, but it sounded silly, I realized -- like what you might offer at a going-away party, which I earnestly hoped this would not be.