Claiming to speak for "we the people," the framers of the US Constitution offered it as a tool to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

"Here we go with the Fake Polls," President Donald Trump tweeted on July 15. "Just like what happened with the Election against Crooked Hillary Clinton." He's complaining about several polls that show him losing the national popular vote to various Democratic presidential aspirants, in some cases by double-digits. He has a point. In 2016, most polls showed Hillary Clinton winning handily and most Americans seem surprised when Trump emerged victorious.

In 2008, billionaire asset manager Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers negotiated a very favorable plea bargain in Florida, under which he served a mere 13 months in jail — in his own private wing, with 12 hours of daily "work release" — on a single charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor (the FBI had identified 40 alleged victims of sexual predation on his part).

Self-help guru Marianne Williamson isn't likely to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, despite having probably served the American public more ably than any of her opponents. (Among other things, her Project Angel Food delivers millions of meals to the seriously ill). Good works aside, she's a little too "New Age," spiritual, and individualist/voluntarist-oriented for a population increasingly viewing coercive government as its living and unquestionable God.