A Denver state judge, Sarah B. Wallace of the 2nd Judicial District Court, was asked if candidate Donald Trump can appear on the Colorado Republican primary ballot or if he is disqualified based on a post-Civil War part of the Constitution meant to exclude Confederate traitors from public office.

During the pandemic years, Americans’ trust in scientists fell, according to a Pew poll released this month. In 2019, only 13% of Americans were distrustful enough to say they weren’t confident in scientists to act in the public’s best interest. Now that figure is 27% — despite recent triumphs in astronomy, cancer research, genetics and other fields.

The latest Consumer Price Index report showed inflation slowing in October, due in part to a supposed 34% drop in the cost of health insurance from the same time last year. That left many people scratching their heads, since you’d be hard pressed to find anyone whose premiums dropped at all, let alone by that much. Is someone cooking the books at the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

Holding judges to high ethical standards is essential to the US legal system. The Supreme Court’s recent adoption of an ethics code is an overdue acknowledgement of this reality. But the court’s failure to include any enforcement provisions reduces the code to a paper tiger. The public shouldn’t fall for it.

If polls are to be believed, the U.S. is seriously thinking about putting Donald Trump back in the White House. To those not steeped in politics, that prospect might seem astounding. Naïve observers will ask, first, how Republicans can possibly believe that he’s the right man to lead the country. Next, they will ask why Democrats can’t summon the wit to wreck his chances.

Between 2018 and 2022 many of the states with high rates of poverty — Oklahoma, New York — were also the states that suffered the most damage from extreme weather. A new climate study indicates things are going to get worse for those places and for poor people.