Republicans really, really love Trump

Donald Trump’s rapid rise in the polls last year to become the leader of the race for the Republican nomination initially caused concern but not too much alarm within the party establishment. Then as his rise stalled and his poll numbers stagnated at around the 35% from January through March of this year, his plurality in the polls was shrugged off as his ceiling of support, his leadership position as an artifact of the field being crowded with 17 hopefuls that was splitting the anti-Trump vote and that as candidates dropped out, their supporters would slowly coalesce around one of the other candidates, preferably the party’s preferred candidates like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, and that Trump would slowly lose ground and then disappear.
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There is nothing like changing symbols to drive people crazy

If you had asked me which person’s face was on which US currency note, I would have been stumped. The only thing I was sure of was that it was some white guy from the distant past. Like most people, I am more concerned about the number that denotes the value rather than the ornamentation. But some people are sure upset about the decision to replace Andrew Jackson with abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill, seeing it as yet another sign of that dreaded ‘political correctness’ that is ruining America.
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A nightmare ticket?

Ah spring, when during presidential election years political pundits’ fancy lightly turn to thoughts of possible running mates. Usually these speculations try to construct so-called ‘dream tickets’, combinations that its advocates think would either increase chances of victory due to providing balance or satisfy a felt need for ideological consistency if the presidential nominee’s credentials are suspect. Campaigns at this time float many names as trial balloons in order to gauge reactions as well as placate the various factions in their parties that they are being respected and included, and so these rumors should not be taken too seriously.
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The sincerity of religious beliefs and doctrines

Over the weekend I attended a very interesting talk on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) by Nicholas Little who is the Legal Director for the Center for Inquiry. He reminded us that RFRA was originally meant to provide legal protection for minority religious practices but is now being used by majority religions to gain privileges and discriminate against others and has become the main vehicle for people to argue against the Affordable Care Act. He said that while courts are required to give deference to the religious beliefs of people because of RFRA, the closely related Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), and the Free Exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment, this poses a problem with people who try to use that to get special privileges.
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Einstein’s visit to Sri Lanka

Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa stopped off in Colombo in 1922 on their way to Japan but the visit did not receive the kind of widespread publicity in the local papers that one would have expected, given how famous he was. True, he had not as yet received the Nobel Prize. A few weeks after his visit, the announcement was made while he was in Japan that he had received his retrospectively for 1921, but he was still an eminent celebrity. I myself was not aware of this visit until a friend of mine recently sent me a link to this article that summarized what Einstein had written in his private notes about the visit and his encounter with a rickshaw, a mode of transport that has disappeared, though I remember seeing them as a child.
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Stephen Colbert apologizes to Australia

Recently actors and married couple Johnny Depp and Amber Heard created a controversy by trying to smuggle their two dogs into Australia on a visit while trying to evade that country’s strict quarantine laws. He got caught but was allowed to leave without suffering the serious punishment (that could go up to ten years in prison) that a non-celebrity might have received. He later provided a video of a grudging apology.
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