Light bench
President-elect Donald Trump won't take office for more than two weeks, but retiring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has seen the future of his Democratic Party and is not a fan of what he sees.
"It appears," he said of the potential candidates for 2020, "we're going to have an old folks' home."
He went on to tick off the names of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who will be 71 in 2020, Vice President Joe Biden, who will be 78, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who will be 79.
Warren, who tops a list of 15 Democratic candidates ranked by The Hill, is three years younger than Trump but nevertheless would be older than Trump or 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were this year if she ran in 2020.
In addition to the septuagenarian trio, The Hill listed Sanders second and Biden ninth. Its other names were New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, third; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (who would be 60), fourth; New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, fifth; first lady Michelle Obama, sixth; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (who would be 68), seventh; Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, eighth; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (who would be 62), 10th; California Sen.-elect Kamala Harris, 11th; Clinton (who would be 73), 12th; former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (who would be 64), 13th; Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (who would be 62), 14th; and entertainer Oprah Winfrey (who would be 66), 15th.
Democrats may be glad Reid is retiring before he slips and tells it like it is again.
Not-so-welcome wagon
Vice President-elect Mike Pence has taken up temporary residence in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington, D.C., but a far-left organization and his small-minded neighbors are trying to make it uncomfortable for him.
NARAL Pro-Choice America doesn't like Pence's honest pro-life views, so they canvassed his new neighborhood and asked residents to place signs in their yards stating, "This neighborhood trusts women."
The organization was so proud of itself - Pence's across-the-street neighbor even put up a sign- that it tweeted, "We canvassed Mike Pence's new neighborhood in NW DC - and wouldn't you know it, most of his neighbors #TrustWomen!"
"Part of our charge following the election is making sure that Mike Pence knew just how off base he was with the majority of Americans when it comes to abortion access," Kaylie Hanson Long, communications director for the organization, told the DCist. "The best way to let him know that is to go literally right to his door step and tell him."
The chance of Pence - and half of America, which holds the same view - of changing his mind about killing fetuses is zero. But it does again exhibit the pettiness and lack of tolerance of the political left.
The Jerk?
In Hollywood, even Steve Martin gets bullied.
The comedian, actor and author offered a tweet last week following the death of actress Carrie Fisher in which he remarked how when he was a "young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well."
Well, given the reaction, you'd have thought Martin had said she was a reprehensible actress and had a reputation lower than a snake's belly.
"Seriously," Steve Martin, one tweet said, "quit being such a jerk for thinking Carrie Fisher was beautiful and saying so on the occasion of her death."
"Steve Martin's tweet about Carrie Fisher is extremely bad," said another.
Martin, however, was only remarking about his initial impression of the actress's beauty, as any man might have, and then had the maturity to refer to the other attributes he saw in her after he met her.
Bowing to the pressure, though, Martin deleted his tweet.
Many in the Twitterverse came to his defense, though.
"If you were upset by Steve Martin's tweet about Carrie Fisher, congratulations! You are now officially addicted to outrage," one said. "Now, seek help."
The sad part of it is those who would object to the tweet don't even realize where they went wrong.
All facts matter
The Black Lives Matter movement says it exists because black lives are taken disproportionately by white policemen.
A new study, though, blows a hole in that theory. The study looked at 2,699 fatal police killings in the U.S. between 2013 and 2015 and concluded that, "when either the violent crime rate or the demographics of a city are accounted for," "white officers are not significantly more likely to kill a black suspect."
Of the suspects killed, 45 percent were white, 25 percent black and 16 percent Hispanic.
"White officers are significantly less likely than black officers to kill black suspects, and they are not statistically significantly different from Hispanic, other race and unknown race police officers," the study, which was conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center, stated.
The study is unlikely to change any minds. Facts never do if they get in the way of a good tale.