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I am a registered liberal who mostly toes the party line but I am not devoted to the idea of big government. I loathe the law in New York state requiring gas pump nozzles to not latch. This means that I must stand beside my vehicle, holding the nozzle lever open, instead of latching it and walking into the gas station to use the john which, if you're an older male and hear gushing liquid, you feel a powerful urge to do, so thanks to legislative over-regulation, I am on the verge of humiliating myself.

Liberals believe in universal suffrage, but I don't think the right to vote should be extended to people walking around with wires going into their ears. If you need to walk through the world in a state of stupefaction, you don't belong in a democracy. The ballot should belong to people who pay attention.

I have other strong conservative tendencies: I accept limitations as inevitable, even sometimes futility. I once gave a very funny speech in the chapel of an Ivy League college and my voice went ricocheting around the Gothic arches and came back to me 15 seconds later and it was incomprehensible, even to me whose voice it was. I might as well have been speaking Navajo. Nobody laughed. I did not complain to authorities. I was amused. Stuff happens.

Life is unfair. The National Endowment for the Arts bestows pots of gold on poets, chickenfeed on humorists, and so what? The federal government is responsible for the announcement in airports warning you to report to authorities any stranger who asks you to carry an object aboard an aircraft. It's like telling people to report any sightings of unicorns. But who cares? Not I.

All around Washington stand handsome temples housing the ABA, NEA, AFL-CIO, the Federated Organization of Associations, the Organization of Associated Federations, the American Scatological Society, the National Recidivists Alliance, all of which have marbly lobbies and numerous executive vice presidents whose job is to buttonhole public servants. My group, UNCLE, the United Newspaper Columnists in the Language of English, has no such temple. We are harmless, like the Moose and the Elks, and ask only to be left alone.

Same with my other group, Minnesotans Oppressed by Rather Obsessive Self-Effacement (MOROSE), which, despite our resistance to attitudism, refusing to cheer at football games or join sing-alongs, has only dug a hole for itself. People regard us as a joke. We are not. We are victims of a self-mortifying culture and dare not ask anything for ourselves such as major defense installations, which go to Texas or California, but what are you going to do?

So there I am, pumping gas in Poughkeepsie, about to wet myself, all because of big government, and it dawns on me that back in my boyhood days, patient and practical-minded men and women got into politics and formed a strong bipartisan bloc that worked for decent mental health facilities and prisons, made higher education available to children of mail clerks and waitresses, created parks and protected wilderness all the basic stuff of government. That bloc seems to have evaporated and now we are locked in bitter conflict about which way is up and whether the earth is round. Crankiness is in the driver's seat.

Meanwhile, dreadful things are afoot. Powerful people want to put potheads in prison, clamp down on travel to Cuba, let banks mess around however they like, deport the folks who pick the lettuce and slaughter the hogs, and work assiduously to ease the troubles of the very rich, and if one says boo to them, they blame the media or my aunt Sally. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country lest the quick brown fox jump over the lazy dog and President Etaoin Shrdlu endure. Sad! Total loser! You know it, I know it.

Republicans, beware. The tables will turn. We liberals will regain power by the simple method of redistricting. We will incorporate the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah into California, and usher in a hundred years of progressivism. What goes around comes around. Be wise. The Senate majority staffers who are trying to put lipstick on a cruel House health care bill are spitting into the wind. In 20 years, Obamacare will be gone, replaced by universal Medicare, and you will be employed as carnival workers, running the kiddie rides, and you'll stop for gas in New York and remember this column and ask yourselves, "Why didn't we listen to him then?" Well, why don't you?

Washington Post

Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.

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Republicans, beware. The tables will turn. - Chicago Tribune

The Republican campaign to roll back Barack Obama's health care law is colliding with America's opioid epidemic. Medicaid cutbacks would hit hard in states deeply affected by the addiction crisis and struggling to turn the corner, according to state data and concerned lawmakers in both parties.

The central issue is that the House health care bill would phase out "Obamacare's" expanded Medicaid, which allows states to provide federally backed insurance to low-income adults previously not eligible. Many people in that demographic are in their 20s and 30s and dealing with opioid addiction. Dollars from Washington have allowed states to boost their response to the crisis, paying for medication, counseling, therapy and other services.

According to data compiled by The Associated Press, Medicaid expansion accounted for 61 percent of total Medicaid spending on substance abuse treatment in Kentucky, 47 percent in West Virginia, 56 percent in Michigan, 59 percent in Maryland, and 31 percent in Rhode Island. In Ohio, the expansion accounted for 43 percent of Medicaid spending in 2016 on behavioral health, a category that includes mental health and substance abuse.

Those states accepted the Medicaid expansion and represent a cross-section of places hardest hit by the nation's drug-overdose epidemic, which claimed more than 52,000 lives in 2015. Of the deaths, more than 6 in 10 were due to opioids, from prescription pain relievers like oxycodone to street drugs like heroin and an elephant tranquilizer.

Tracy Plouck, Ohio's director of mental health and addiction services, said Medicaid expansion dollars from Washington have allowed her state to redirect its own resources to priorities like providing recovery housing after detox. Reversing that would have real consequences for people who are trying to straighten their out their lives, she said. "If you go back into an environment where people are using, that sets you up with a risk that's nearly insurmountable."

In Youngstown, factory mechanic Paul Wright credits sustained help from Medicaid with his survival after he nearly died from a heroin overdose. Wright said he had started using as a teenager but now has been drug-free for 18 months. Before Medicaid expanded, his father's health insurance would pay for detox but not for long-term treatment. Wright would relapse. With Medicaid, he's been able to get follow-up.

"It's truly sad, but I've been to many funerals since I've been clean," said Wright, who's in his mid-20s. "I just think Medicaid honestly it saves people." And he's able to work.

The House GOP bill would end the extra funding states get through expanded Medicaid in 2020, and place a limit on overall federal spending for the program in the future. People already covered like Wright would be grandfathered in as long as they continue to meet eligibility requirements. But that's no comfort to Carolyn Givens, who runs the Neil Kennedy Recovery Center, where Wright gets help.

"If somebody could say to me, 'Carolyn, the crisis is going to be over next week,' I'd feel OK but I got 40 people on a waiting list," Givens said.

Medicaid cuts have become a major sticking point in the Senate for the GOP's American Health Care Act. Republican leaders can afford to lose only two votes, and several GOP senators from hard-hit states have been critical. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday that senators are considering stretching the phase-out by three years, to 2023.

At a recent budget hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price defended the Trump administration and raised questions about how much difference Medicaid actually makes.

The HHS budget for the opioid crisis is more than three times as great as two years ago, $811 million versus $245 million, Price said. That reflects increases approved by Congress beyond what Medicaid spends.

Questioned by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., about the consequences of reducing Medicaid's commitment, Price responded that more government spending is not the answer.

"Let me respectfully suggest ... that the programs that are out there by and large are not working," Price said. "We are losing more Americans today than we did last year. ... Clearly we're moving in the wrong direction."

Price suggested that states would be more effective with greater flexibility promised by the GOP plan for Medicaid.

Said Leahy: "As a child I believed in the tooth fairy, but I'm a little bit older now."

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said it's too early to expect a turnaround in the epidemic. "The resources are just getting to the communities," she said.

In New Hampshire, "we're just beginning to see the benefits of having the expansion of Medicaid to provide treatment for people," Shaheen added.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., wasn't convinced either. "I'm having trouble, as many of us are, reconciling your stated goal (about the opioid crisis) being one of your top three priorities with these dramatic cuts, " she said to Price during the hearing.

Cutting financing for the Medicaid expansion "would create an unsustainable financial obligation" for West Virginia, said Allison Adler, a spokeswoman for the state's health department.

Back in Youngstown, recovering addict Niki Campana said "it's like the apocalypse around here." Campana is helping other women with drug problems.

"I work with a lot of girls that struggle," she said at the Kennedy treatment center. "We can get them on Medicaid in a day and get them in treatment. For that not to be able to happen, that would be horrible."

Associated Press writers Adam Beam in Frankfort, Kent.; Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Randall Chase in Wilmington, Del.; David Eggert in Lansing, Mich.; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M.; Ben Nuckols in Washington; Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt.; Michelle R. Smith in Providence, R.I.; Michael Virtanen in Morgantown, W.Va., and Brian Witte in Annapolis contributed to this report.

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Republicans' Medicaid rollback collides with opioid epidemic - Chicago Tribune

Jonathan Rauch in Lawfare writes on Republicans' continued devotion to President Donald Trump:

"Perhaps there are limits to Republicans' tolerance, but if Trump hasn't already triggered them, it is hard to imagine where they are. The firing of a special prosecutor? An indictment? Possibly, but one wonders if it might be literally true that Trump could, as he once boasted, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and retain Republican support.

"The numbers support no predictions, but they offer a hint. Even under a worst-case scenario of presidential malfeasance, removing Trump would be no easy or quick task. It would require a sea-change in Republican partisans' attitude, a change of which there is no sign today. And it would require Republican leaders to take political risks that few have shown any appetite for."

GOP defeats in 2018 might give the Democrats the majority in the House, expediting impeachment, but removing Trump would require a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. Without substantial GOP defections, Trump will be there for the remainder of his four-year term.

Could Trump be forced to resign if, for example, the choice was between resignation and being held in contempt of court for refusal to turn over financial records? Perhaps, but it's far from clear that such a standoff would occur. If it did, Trump and his fleet of lawyers could certainly delay and appeal, in essence running out the clock on his presidency.

Whether in 2020 or before, the only surefire means to protect the country from Trump is to defeat his followers, and eventually him. A third-party candidate, as my colleague Michael Gerson recognizes, could throw the race to the Democrat. My reaction to that possibility is: So? We've made the case here and been proved correct that Trump's flaws as a human being and president surpass matters of policy and put the republic at risk.

While it is true that a primary has never defeated a sitting president in more than 100 years (Lyndon Johnson chose not to run in 1968, Jimmy Carter beat back Ted Kennedy and Gerald Ford held off Ronald Reagan), Trump is helping to rewrite the political playbook. An anti-Trump Republican unsullied by sycophancy and presenting a credible program for uniting the country and addressing policy problems that have befuddled Trump would have a historic opportunity.

In the short term, the most effective way of removing Trump is to defeat again and again lawmakers who refuse to remove him, thereby advancing the prospects for impeachment and putting optimum pressure on Republican senators. (Republicans pledging to vote for impeachment or removal in the Senate based on the facts available at the time might spare themselves.)

With Georgia's special election Tuesday in the 6th Congressional District, we'll get our first inkling of just how vulnerable Republicans might be in 2018. Between now and 2018, Democrats, independents and the small cadre of #NeverTrump Republicans need to pursue two tracks simultaneously keeping the special counselor in place (and assisting in the fact-finding process with open hearings, when possible) and generating momentum to defeat the greatest possible number of Trump protectors. That might entail fielding third-party candidates and primary challenges. Democrats certainly will need to keep their base energized, field an all-star list of candidates and make the case against the extreme Trump agenda while presenting reasonable alternatives of their own.

The only real guarantee, you see, of reversing the debacle of 2016 is to defeat Trump and his minions at the polls. The solution to democracy gone astray is always more democracy.

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.

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To stop Donald Trump, defeat the Republicans who enable him - Chicago Tribune

After 21 weeks at the controls of the White House and both chambers of the U.S. Congress, President Donald Trump and his Republicans have yet to pass major legislation into law and are short on time to do so before Washington's long summer recess.

The House of Representatives reconvened on Tuesday. It will be in session for the next nine weekdays, along with the Senate, which reconvened on Monday. Both chambers will take a break from July 1-9, then return and work July 10-28. After that, Capitol Hill will be quiet through the annual August vacation.

Trump set high expectations as a candidate and early in his presidency, promising to repeal and replace Obamacare, invest in infrastructure and work to cut taxes and regulations. These pledges have helped fuel a powerful stock market rally.

Trump's only big domestic policy win, aside from killing a handful of Obama-era regulations, has been Senate approval 10 weeks ago of a new Supreme Court justice. The White House has not sent Congress a legislative proposal on any major issue.

Trump has been swamped by investigations into possible ties between his campaign and alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In Congress, the House has approved an Obamacare rollback bill, but it has stalled in the Senate. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence predicted a Republican healthcare bill would be enacted by the end of summer.

Competing tax reform plans have divided Republicans in both chambers. No firm infrastructure plan has emerged, and lawmakers have not yet formulated a budget plan for 2018.

Urgent budget deadlines will follow the August break, and later in the year, lawmakers will begin focusing on the 2018 congressional elections.

Here is a look at key dates coming up.

June 20: Special House elections in Georgia and South Carolina.

June 30: Congress starts Independence Day break.

July 7-8: Trump attends G20 summit in Germany, his first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

July 28: Congress adjourns for five-week summer recess.

July-August: U.S. Treasury may no longer be able to postpone the federal debt limit, although this may not arrive until late 2017.

Sept. 5: Congress reconvenes.

Sept. 30: End of federal fiscal year 2017. Without congressional action, funding for many programs will expire.

Oct. 1: Start of federal fiscal year 2018. Current federal spending deal expires. Without a new deal, the federal government could shut down.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Lisa Von Ahn)

WASHINGTON Legislation to impose new sanctions on Russia and Iran that passed the U.S. Senate nearly unanimously last week has run into a procedural problem that could prevent a quick vote in the House of Representatives, lawmakers said on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON The U.S. Justice Department has launched a 12-city partnership to combat spikes in violent crime as part of President Donald Trump's vow to support law enforcement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Tuesday.

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Factbox: Time slipping by for Trump, Republicans on domestic goals - Reuters

A bill that slaps new sanctions on Russia, and passed the Senate almost unanimously, has hit a major stumbling block in the House.

Rep. Kevin BradyKevin BradyHouse Republicans block Russia sanctions bill New border adjustment tax would amount to a trillion tax hike on consumers Club for Growth bashes border tax ahead of Ryan speech MORE (R-Texas) said the legislation has been flagged by the House parliamentarian as a "blue slip" violation, referring to the constitutional requirement that revenue bills originate in the House.

"The House obviously will actto preserve the Constitution. Or the Senate can take thebillback, make the updates to it, and bring it back and move forward from that direction," Brady told reporterson Tuesday.

Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, pushed back against suggestions that House GOP leadership is trying to delay the bill, stressing that he thought the Senate legislation was "sound policy."

"I am confident working with the Senate and Chairman [Ed] Royce that we can move this legislation forward. So at the end of the day, this isnt a policy issue, its not a partisan issue, it is a Constitutional issue that we will address," he toldreporters.

A spokesperson for Royce didn't immediatelyrespond to request for comment.

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul RyanPaul RyanIronworker announces run against Paul Ryan: 'Let's trade places' House Republicans block Russia sanctions bill Overnight Finance: Ryan wants tax reform to be permanent | White House expects tax bill ready by September | Defense spending battle delays budget MORE (R-Wis.)said,"The Senate bill cannot be considered in the House its current form."

"The chair of the Ways and Means Committee, in consultation with the House Parliamentarian, has determined that the Senate sanctions bill as passed is in violation of the origination clause of the Constitution, commonly referred to as a 'blue slip' problem," she said.

She addedthat Ryan strongly supports sanctions and "we will determine the next course of action after speaking with our Senate colleagues."

An aide for Sen. Bob CorkerBob CorkerHouse Republicans block Russia sanctions bill US weighs travel ban on North Korea: report GOP senator: ObamaCare repeal bill coming Thursday MORE (R-Tenn.), who was deeply involved in negotiating the Senatedeal, said that the House has raised "concerns with one of the final provisions" of the bill.

"Now that we fully understand the issue raised today, we are working closely with them to further resolve the matter. We are confident we can find a path forward," the staffer said.

The aide for Corker didn't immediately respond to a question about what the "final provisions" included. Asked specifically what provision of the House bill got flagged as a "blue slip" violation, a spokeswoman for Brady referred back to his comments to reporters.

"The House has always, in a bipartisan way, followed protocol to avoid Origination Clause violations. It's the Constitution. It's pretty straightforward," a senior GOP aide added.

But the decision is soundingalarmbells among Democrats, who are warning that Republicans could be trying to delay the bill amid pushback from the Trump administration.

Senate Minority Leader Charles SchumerCharles SchumerDems step up attacks on GOP ObamaCare bill Live coverage: Senate Dems hold talkathon to protest GOP health plan GOP exploiting Virginia shooting in Georgia election MORE (D-N.Y.) lambasted the move, arguing they're using the procedural roadblock to cover for Trump, "who has been far too soft on Russia."

"Responding to Russias assault on our democracy should be a bipartisan issue that unites both Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate. The House Republicans need to pass this bill as quickly as possible," he said.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, added that Republicans could easilywork aroundthe violation by introducing anindentionHouse bill.

[But] I predict this isn't the last excuse we'll hear for trying to slow this bill's momentum, but make no mistake, anything short of an up-or-down vote on this tough sanctionspackage is an attempt to let Russia off the hook," he said.

Sen. Ben CardinBen CardinDems are limited in their ability to slow ObamaCare vote House Republicans block Russia sanctions bill Overnight Finance: Ryan seeks manufacturing muscle for tax reform | Warren targets Wells Fargo board | Senators raise concerns over Russian takeover of Citgo | Pelosi hits GOP for budget delays MORE (D-Md.) stressed that he didn't think the Senate bill actually had a "blueslip"issue,but echoed Engel noting they it could be "easily corrected" by using a House bill.

"What theHousemany times believes [is] that if there's any fine in thelegislation ... that's a revenue measure, and therefore that comes under the blue slip," he said. "I don't believethat's a part of this bill, but I know the House has raised this in the past."

Headded, "If you take that logic, the Senate could neverinitiate any sanctions legislation."

The Senate passed the legislation last week, marking its most significant check on the Trump administrations foreign policy, which has flirted with lifting sanctions ina bidto entice Moscow into an agreement.

The legislation would impose a range of new sanctions, including on any individuals tied to "malicious cyber activity," supplying weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government or any that are tied to Russia's intelligence and defense sectors.

It would also give Congress 30 days or 60 days around the August recess to review and potentially block Trump from lifting or relaxing Russia sanctions, codify the sanctions on Russia imposed by executive order by the Obama administration and allow the Trump administration to impose new sanctions on sectors of the Russian economy.

It also includes new sanctions targeting Irans ballistic missile development, support for terrorism, transfer of weapons and human rights violations.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to use a House Foreign Affairs hearing this week to telegraph concerns about the bill, warning lawmakers against undercutting constructive dialogue with Russia.

"I would urge Congress to ensure any legislation allows the president to have the flexibility to adjust sanctions," he told lawmakers.

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House Republicans block Russia sanctions bill - The Hill (blog)