Illinois just became the 37th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Since the necessary constitutional requirement for adopting amendments is ratification by the state legislatures of three-fourths of the total number of states, this would seem to indicate that if only one more state did so, the Equal Rights Amendment would become the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. But it's not quite that simple.

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Representative Trey Gowdy -- not normally known for being a Trump antagonist -- has been publicly debunking the president's new favorite conspiracy theory, in his latest news interviews. This is a somewhat stunning development, and further marginalizes Representative Devin Nunes, who keeps fruitlessly trying to uncover the smoking gun that proves that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other nefarious Democrats somehow entered into a giant plot to use the F.B.I. to further their own political aims. The F.B.I. and the rest of the "Deep State" conspired to put Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office, according to Nunes and the rest of the tinfoil-hat gang. Of course, this conspiracy theory never really gets around to explaining why, if this was the case, the F.B.I. intervened twice to undercut Clinton during the campaign, but never did so for Donald Trump. Recently, Nunes tried again to reveal the supposed truth of his suspicions by forcing a briefing about a confidential F.B.I. informant, initially to just him and Gowdy. Then Nunes would have run to the television cameras with his proof and the entire Bob Mueller investigation would just disappear like the morning dew. Or something. But the bombshell Nunes anticipated turned out to be a dud, once again. And in the past 24 hours, Gowdy has shot the whole "spygate" theory down in flames.

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The best quip I've heard about the explosive television news today has got to be: "This was the problem all along: Having Roseanne back meant having Roseanne back." In other words, the show was great and funny and all of that, but Roseanne Barr (the actress, not the Roseanne Conner character) had, in the years that intervened between the original run's cancellation and the reboot, completely gone off the rails. She was not just a Trump voter, to put this another way, she was out-Trumping Trump in her support of crazy conspiracy theories. And, yes, some of those crazy conspiracy theories were also pretty racist or (at the start, she later became staunchly pro-Israel) blatantly anti-Semitic.

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Since today is Memorial Day, I'd like to begin with a remembrance of our most forgettable war, the War of 1812. How forgettable was this war? Well, its bicentennial passed by a few years ago, but the country as a whole took little notice. That's pretty forgettable, as these things are measured. In fact, only one event during this war has become what one might call (if one were in the mood for a pun) a "Key" moment, but more on that in due course.

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We've always been planning a meeting with Eastasia. What's that? Oh, wait... we've never been planning a meeting with Eastasia. Any suggestion of such a meeting has been tossed down the memory hole -- along with the commemorative coins we prematurely minted to celebrate it.

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This is the fourth time in two weeks I've written about Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. And, at this point, I have to admit, I'm completely stumped. I have no idea what is going on, and no idea what to expect next. I suspect I am not alone in this position, either.

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Last night, Stacey Abrams moved one step closer to making history, by easily defeating Stacey Evans in the Democratic primary for governor in the state of Georgia. If she can manage an upset win in November, she will become the first African-American woman governor in American history. So it would be a big milestone not only for the voters of Georgia, but nationwide.

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That's a rather jarring headline, because it's a rather jarring thought. Is Bernie Sanders "rigging" his own election? Sanders was not a big fan (to put it mildly) of election-rigging not so long ago, after all, so the charge is especially personal. Given the evidence, I would have to say that technically Bernie isn't trying to "rig" his own election, rather he is encouraging the voters to rig it for him -- which to some may be a distinction without a difference, but to me is a hair worth splitting.

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Donald Trump supposedly wrote a book on how to be the world's best dealmaker. He didn't actually write it, of course (hence the "supposedly"), and it's even doubtful whether he's ever even read it through, cover to cover. He's not a big reading guy, to put it as politely as possible. But the thoughts contained within The Art Of The Deal were indeed Trump's, painstakingly collected by his ghostwriter. What one has to wonder right now, though, is whether North Korea's Kim Jong Un is following Trump's dealmaking script better than Trump -- because from outside appearances, this now seems to be the case. Perhaps, unlike Trump himself, Kim Jong Un actually read (and took to heart) The Art Of The Deal.

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I have to begin with my sincerest apologies, since I know that it's Friday and everyone is looking forward to the end-of-the-week column; but circumstances beyond my control forced me to spend today dealing with my own personal offline world. We had to visit the doctor for a new cast on my wife's arm [...]

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