Warren hiring them, one by one
It was a perfect Elizabeth Warren moment.
The Massachusetts senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, on Monday of last week, announced a plan that would "end lobbying as we know it." Her plan included a "cooling off" period for lobbyists before they could serve in government roles and would prevent them from donating to political campaigns, a practice she called "legalized bribery."
The next day, Warren hired a Planned Parenthood lobbyist as the Florida state director for her campaign.
"The fundamental promise of our democracy is that every voice matters," the senator's plan states. "But when lobbyists and big corporations can buy influence from politicians, that promise is broken. The first thing to do to fix it is to end lobbying as we know it."
So, Warren might answer, even if she is violating the plan she would have as law, by hiring the lobbyist she is trying to "end lobbyist as we know it," one lobbyist at a time.
Ain't getting my gun
At least one Democratic senator thinks former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke can go pound sand with his proposal for mandatory gun buybacks and, if necessary, taking forced possession of them.
"Beto's one human being," Sen Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, told the Wall Street Journal last week. "He gave his own opinion, OK? I think it was very harmful to make it look like all the Democrats [believed in his positions]. I can tell you one thing: [O'Rourke's] not taking my guns away from me."
The former El Paso, Texas, legislator had previously held more moderate views on gun control and the Second Amendment, but a floundering campaign perhaps caused him to change his mind and take more radical positions.
In the most recent Democratic primary debate, he made his current feelings perfectly clear when he said, "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47; we're not going to allow it to be used on fellow Americans anymore."
Such language, South Bend, Indiana Mayor and fellow candidate Pete Buttigieg said, is "playing in the hands of Republicans."
Carter in 2020?
Former President Jimmy Carter, almost 95 himself, isn't so sure about all these old fogeys taking on the job of president.
Cajoled by the moderator of a town hall event at the Carter Center in Atlanta last week, "What will it take to convince you to run for president?," the former chief executive first made reference to Grover Cleveland, the only person who served two nonconsecutive terms as president.
But then he seemed to get serious.
"I hope there is an age limit," Carter said. "You know, if I were just 80 years old, if I were 15 years younger, I don't believe I could undertake the duties that I experienced when I was president. "
"So the things I faced then in foreign affairs," he said, "I don't think I could undertake them when I was 80 years old. So 95 is out of the question. I had a hard time walking when I came in."
Age has become at least somewhat of an issue in the Democratic primary campaign, with whispered and not-so-whispered comments about the top-polling but gaffe-prone Joe Biden, the former vice president, who is 76. In addition, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, is 78, and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, is 70. President Donald Trump is 73.
If Trump wins a second term, or if Biden or Sanders win, they would be the oldest president ever to be inaugurated for a first or second term.
Marching in place
The Women's March is having trouble keeping leadership. Several of those the left-wing organization has recently hired have turned out to be raging anti-Semites.
The latest to go was Zahra Billoo, its newest board member, who was dismissed just days after her appointment was announced after past anti-Semitic social media posts surfaced.
Among, them was a 2017 Facebook post in which she said she would boycott the movie "Wonder Woman" because its main character - the fictional character, not the actress who played her - served in the Israeli Defense Forces.
"I similarly would not watch a movie where the lead actor or actress were proud of their participation in the US military, ISIS or Al Qaeda," Billoo wrote.
In another post, she said she didn't see any difference in joining ISIS or the Israeli Defense Forces.
Earlier, the Women's March dispatched activists Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory, both of whom had histories of anti-Semitic remarks.
And to think the organization began in retaliation to the soon-to-be-President Trump, who organizers accused of making unfair remarks about groups himself.