Roy Moore’s small-but-solid lead over Doug Jones is the biggest reason why Trump has gone all-in for Moore. Besides the endorsement, the Pensacola rally, and the reentry by the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee into the race, Trump has cut a robocall on behalf of Moore. All this after Trump spent the weeks following the initial Washington Post story waffling about his support for Moore. What changed? Trump is telling those close to him that he thinks Moore will win, and for the president, that’s what matters.

If we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that the Republican party, even when handed full control of the American government, is so riven and otherwise dysfunctional that it simply can’t govern. The one consolation Republicans have is that voters seem to intuitively understand that while the Democratic party is more effective, it’s ideological imperatives mean it can’t be trusted to govern, either. The recent controversy over the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) is another in a long line of exhibits as to why exactly that is. anyone who is concerned about abuses of federal power.

A job shuffle that would put Senator Tom Cotton in charge of the CIA is one of the worst ideas to come out of the Trump administration.

It’s not that Cotton couldn’t handle things at the intelligence agency. That’s not the problem. It’s what would be lost on Capitol Hill if Cotton, 40, leaves the Senate. He’s only been there for three years but he’s already a critical player.

Who came up with the proposal to use the Trump tax reform bill to kill ObamaCare’s mandate forcing everyone to buy health insurance? (A two-fer that also allows for a bigger cut in taxes.

Die Hard is a Christmas movie. We know this because the American Film Institute’s Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland—honestly, one of the great cultural institutions of the Washington area—screens it as part of its Holiday Classics series each December. (Though I would argue that Die Hard II is even more obviously a Christmas movie: Like many a Christmas film, its plot centers on someone’s harried attempt to to get home for the holiday.)

But, there’s a movie that’s even more obviously a Christmas classic, even if it doesn’t get the notice it deserves as such: Eyes Wide Shut.

On October 26, the National Archives was supposed to release the last of its remaining records on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The date was chiseled in a 1992 statute. Around 88 percent of the records had already been made public, but there were still 3,200 documents that had never been available and nearly 35,000 more that had only been released in redacted form.

As the date neared, Representative Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) declared, “It’s time to let people know the truth.” Jones believes (like a majority of Americans, according to polls) that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had confederates and that important facts about that “awful afternoon” are still hidden away.

On December 5, the Republican National Committee formalized its support for Roy Moore by sending $170,000 to aid his campaign in the race’s final week. The decision came days after President Donald Trump announced his endorsement of Moore. The money is a pittance in the world of modern campaign finance. But the RNC’s decision to back Moore—after having withdrawn its money and manpower from the race three weeks before—is the sign of a political party rotting from the center out.

There was a time in the not-too distant past when the government’s monthly labor report was the most eagerly anticipated and influential of all economic data, and could move markets. Unemployment and a rising number of workers dropping out of the labor market meant the Great Recession had not run its course, the reverse meant that a recovery was rearing its pretty head. Share traders hoped that things were getting better, but no so quickly as to prompt the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates to prevent overheating.

That was then, and this is now.

Economy-watchers still had an interest in Friday’s jobs report, but it could hardly be called avid. So the economy added 228,000 jobs in November. Good. And