Columns

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to give states ultimate jurisdiction over abortion could make, and likely will make, this year’s Ohio Supreme Court races even more lively than they already were destined to be. It’ll also stir up the General Assembly. That’s because a newly filed court case, backed by abortion clinics, may rank abortion front-and-center among the Ohio high court’s key issues when Ohioans elect or re-elect three state Supreme Court justices this November.

Under the Biden administration, terms such as “birthing person” have become common when referring to those who bear children, instead of “woman” or “mother.” This is not surprising, coming from a president who once famously said, “We choose truth over facts.”

Dear Republicans:

It’s been a fabulous week for conservatives, Republicans and millions of ordinary Americans.

Martin Walker, the gifted former Washington correspondent of The Guardian, used to start his speeches saying that the Fourth of July wasn’t a time for sorrow for him, as it was a time when good British yeomen farmers in the colonies revolted against a German king and his German mercenaries.

OK, raise your hand if you think you’ve received a scam phone call or text this past week. If you raised your hand, you’re probably right. YouMail, a company specializing in blocking those messages, estimates Americans will receive 52 billion (with a B) robocalls this year, which breaks down to 1 billion every week. If you think the number of scam phone calls you get on your cell phone is bad, nearly half of all phone calls to landlines are deemed to be bogus.

Nearly a year before the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, media baron Henry Luce wrote a Life magazine editorial, declaring that “The 20th Century must to a significant degree be an American Century.”

I’m flipping through a book my wife, Karen, gave me for my birthday: “Taste — My Life Through Food” — by Stanley Tucci. It’s about his life and love affair with food, among other things.

What would the Founders think of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs? Say we do what Bill and Ted did in their “Excellent Adventure.” We jump into a phone-booth-shaped time machine and travel back to 1776 to find Thomas Jefferson and ask him about Dobbs. I see at least two possibilities.

When the U.S. Constitution was ratified June 21, 1788, the two men most responsible for its success were Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who, along with John Jay, wrote The Federalist Papers.