Donald Kaul's blog

My mother always told me never to speak ill of the dead.

For that reason I won’t go on at length about Antonin Scalia, the recently departed Supreme Court justice. My opinion wouldn’t be worth that much anyway. I didn’t know the man — I was never even in the same room with him.

However, I do find this avalanche of posthumous praise of him as “a judicial giant” and one of the great justices of our history a little gag-inducing.

The Iowa caucuses are upon us. Hooray, whoopee, and two cheers.

The contests mark the official beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, which already feels like it’s been going on for two years (because it has).

Some polls say that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican winner, others that Ted Cruz will be. Still others advise us to keep an eye on Marco Rubio, who’s sneaking up fast.

Is 2015 over yet? Is it safe to come out now?

What a bummer. Mass shootings, cops using unarmed civilians for target practice, the Middle East in rubble, terrorist attacks, Donald Trump.

Trump wasn’t the worst of it, perhaps. But he certainly was the most irritating.

It was a spectacle worthy of Tennyson — “Trump to the right of us, Trump to the left of us, Trump in front and behind. Into the valley of Trump rode the 300 million.”

It’s time — past time, really — to name the person of the year. (TIME Magazine does it. Why not me?)

There were many worthy candidates in 2015: the Pope, the Donald, and Luke Skywalker, to name just a few. But only one symbolized the spirit of the year.

I speak, of course, of Martin Shkreli.

When Paris suffered attacks that killed 17 last January — at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket — it responded with great class.

Parisians filled the streets, locked arm-in-arm in solidarity against terrorism. Leaders from throughout Europe (but not, alas, President Barack Obama) joined them in a show of support.

We were treated to a classic man-bites-dog moment at the latest Republican presidential debate.

There the moderators were, CNBC’s finest, lying in ambush with their carefully crafted “when did you stop beating your wife” questions at the ready. But as soon as they tried asking them, the contestants — forgive me, candidates — counter-attacked.

I’ve written at least 75 columns on gun control over the years. It might have been as many as 100.

Every time some demented loser would haul a gun — usually some sort of automatic — into a public place and lay waste around him (it’s always a him), I would get on my soapbox and excoriate the National Rifle Association, gun dealers, and our cowardly politicians for letting this outrage go on unchecked.

And do you know what came of it? Nothing. Unless you count the fact that gun sales always spiked.

The Republicans have finally found someone to man up to Donald Trump, who’s threatening to turn their presidential primaries into a Saturday Night Live skit. She’s a woman.

At the latest Republican debate, with a stage-full of candidates straining at the leash to distinguish themselves by puncturing the balloon that is The Donald, it was Carly Fiorina — and only Carly Fiorina — who coolly stepped forward to reveal his one-man clown show for what it was.

To hear Republican presidential candidates tell it, you’d think the most important issue facing the nation is Hillary Clinton’s old emails.

Not climate change, not the growing gap between the filthy rich and the deserving poor, and not our crumbling roads, declining schools, or tattered justice system — just Hillary’s emails.