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Ah, the travails of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In The Times, Bret Stephens questioned how McCarthy can manage a Republican circus in which Donald Trump is the ringmaster, Matt Gaetz cracks the whip, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is in charge of the clowns. Bret also wrote that if McCarthys impeachment inquiry were any more premature, it would be a teenage boy. (Thanks to Rosemary A. Fletcher-Jones of New Milton, England, and Michael Melius of Hermosa, S.D., among many others, for singling out Brets descriptions.)

In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank added: McCarthy, whose main strength as a leader has always been his steadfast devotion to self-preservation, recognized that he was about to get trampled by the impeachment parade. So he stepped out in front of it and pretended to be the drum major. (Arlyne Willcox, Manhasset, N.Y., and Mike McNeely, Washington, D.C.)

In USA Today, Rex Huppke wondered at the fierceness of many conservatives resistance to a certain accessory and emblem of self-protection: Its nearly autumn, and that means football, pumpkin spice everything and the new liberal tradition of hanging a KN95 mask on the front door to ward off Republicans. He later jested that in addition to the front-door mask, I might sprinkle a little hand sanitizer on the welcome mat for good measure. You cant be too careful these days. (Mary Ellen Scribner, Austin, Texas)

In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Robert Mason Lee recalled the verbal flourishes of Peter C. Newman, a journalist who recently died: Rather than block a metaphor, he would baste it in a Scheherazade of purple sauce, turning it on a spit until it emerged, plump and dripping in word fat, to be enjoyed time and again. (Lesley Barsky, Toronto)

The Economist assessed Britains official risk register of looming threats to society, which seemed an eccentric bureaucratic hobby at its inception in 2008. Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine; A.I. has threatened to develop godlike intelligence with Old Testament consequences; and the pandemic has killed 25 million people worldwide, The Economist wrote. Toby Ord, a philosopher at Oxford, puts the odds of humanity suffering some sort of existential catastrophe within the next century at about one in six. The end, if not yet nigh, feels rather nigher than before. (Ian Proud, Lewisburg, Pa.)

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