When classical musicians audition for a symphony orchestra, they play behind a screen.  They are completely anonymous to the committee on the other side of it, who knows them only by a number.  They are prohibited from speaking to the committee.

Prior to the audition, the musician is given a list of classical repertoire pieces from which he or she will be asked to play a number of excerpts, anywhere from one to three minutes of each selection.  The selections of music will vary depending on the player's instrument.

This process is one of the fairest on the planet.  Not the age, sex, or race of the player is known to the committee who will be deciding which musicians will be chosen.  Candidates are selected on expertise, musical merit alone.

Obviously, the system of college admissions is the farthest from this level of fairness as it can possibly be, but what if it were reformed to be as fair?

Sunday (3/17) was St. Patrick's Day here in Ireland, and around the world as well.  In places like New York and Boston, it's a day to celebrate Irish heritage and to get disgracefully drunk, but not in Ireland, where it's also a national holiday.

Ireland is changing in other ways as well. Gay marriage (we have a gay Taoiseach, or prime minister) is in, and so is abortion.  Having joined the EU against its will, Ireland has now come to embrace the enervated "modernity" of France and Germany.

It's like watching a child parading around in its grandfather's tie-dyed bell bottoms and thinking he's now a sophisticated grownup. Ireland needs St. Patrick again.

Five years ago in mid-March 2014, Russian “little green men” soldiers in unmarked army uniforms and masks took full control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

On March 18 of that year, President Vladimir Putin made a jubilant address to the Russian Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) on the “reunification” with Crimea, asserting, “In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia” (Kremlin.ru, 3/18/2014).

The forceful dismemberment of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea produced an explosion of jingoist triumphalism in Russia, which effectively made most of its citizens accomplices in that blatant violation of international law and 21^st-century norms of European inter-state behavior.

Since then, the “patriotic mobilization” has mostly dissipated and Russian trust in Putin’s leadership has hit a low of 32 percent, according to the official pollster VTsIOM (Wciom.ru, 3/03/2019).  More and more it’s looking like Putin’s seizure of Crimea has cost Russia its future.

Here’s the problem. Whether we eventually build a wall is irrelevant to the calculations of the current crop of migrants, because they know, right now and for the foreseeable future, illegal immigration simply is not punished in the United States. On the contrary, it is rewarded.

You see, the Trump Administration has already tried to implement policies that automatically deny Central Americans and sundry border-hoppers eligibility to apply for asylum. In effect, the Supreme Court has already ruled—thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, who sided with the court’s four liberals—that illegal crossers are entitled to an asylum hearing.

A more recent case may even give rejected asylum seekers the right to appeal. Given the massive backlog, this guarantees asylum seekers, even the most dishonest and dangerous among them, the right to impose themselves on the American people for years to come.

Let’s face it. Given the sheer irrationality of the current system and the out-of-touch judges who preside over it, we must consider practicable alternatives.  Here’s a solution that could really work.

I didn’t say that Boeing is arrogant. I said they have their noses in the air.  Jokes aside, l’Affaire Boeing is a watershed.

President Trump is under pressure to circle the wagons around one of America’s flagship industrial companies, among other reasons because China will exploit the crisis to promote its new entry into the civil aircraft market.

He made a good start yesterday (3/13) by grounding the Boeing 737 Max aircraft in US airspace, after the horrific Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday (3/10) that killed 157.

To follow up, he should ignore the legions of industry lobbyists and their Hallelujah chorus at the Pentagon, and take the opportunity to clean out the swamp in America’s military industry.  Here’s what’s going on.

Californians brag that their state is the world's fifth-largest economy. They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods.

Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic and technological dominance of West Coast culture.

Californians also see their progressive, one-party state as a neo-socialist model for a nation moving hard to the left.

But how long will they retain such confidence?  Not for much longer.  Here’s why and it’s horrific.

Among the many, many things that starkly define the differences between the Left and the right, none is more wretched than the difference in how they approach life.

Leftists, even when they are in power, are generally miserable, discontent with America as it was founded and as it is, always banging their heads against some perceived wall.

Those on the Right, on the other hand, are characterized by general good-natured love of country and the quest to save America from the radical Left's reprehensible appropriation of the culture, academia, the media, and entertainment.  Conservative people revel in their families, work, and self-reliance and their good fortune to be Americans.  They are grateful people.

Leftist are filled with anger, conservatives are filled with gratitude.  What accounts for this?