For the life of me, I can't fathom why Montana Democrats are hellbent on getting Kurt Alme elected as our next senator. By spending their time sniping at Seth Bodner and each other instead of getting their candidates message out accomplishes nothing. Bodnar is going to need to pull Republican votes away from Alme to win, which can only help Alani Bankhead. Democrats could also shore up support for Kyle Austin, the Libertarian candidate in the four-way race. That would also siphon votes from Alme. If Democrats can't beat a Republican when the president is grossly unpopular, corrupt, and starts an illegal unpopular war that has sent inflation soaring. When farmers and ranchers input costs have soared. When the Republican candidate was chosen by backroom shenanigans that showed disdain for the will of Republican voters ... well, maybe Democrats should just turn off the lights. For pity sake, quit bellyaching, Democrats, and get to work.

Scholarly surveys, discussions and polls have consistently revealed a clear consensus: the leadership capacity of the founding generation — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison — is unrivaled by any subsequent coterie of American statesman. It is true that these same academic conversations reflect agreement that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt stand atop the list of America’s greatest presidents, with founding chief executives such as Washington and Jefferson closely on their heels, but there is, it seems, no generation of political leaders across 250 years that is comparable to those who launched the American Revolution, drafted the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The evolution in America of rationales for the cascading growth of presidential power, which began in earnest in the post-war world and followed a trajectory through the expression of the Imperial Presidency before reaching new heights in President Donald Trump’s authoritarian pretensions, has long found traction in the misappropriation and misuse of Justice Robert H. Jackson’s famous aphorism, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

One of the grave consequences for American constitutionalism of the untrammeled concentration of power in the hands of President Donald Trump — the putative goal of Project 2025 — is his total control over the Department of Justice. There is no separation between President Trump and his Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense lawyer, no independence between the White House and the DOJ. What Trump wants, Trump gets — the governing principle of authoritarianism.