The Department of Energy published data last week with some amazing revelations — so amazing that most Americans will find them hard to believe. As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year. Over the past 14 years our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. On a per unit of GDP basis, U.S. carbon emissions are down by closer to 20 percent.

The idea of American exceptionalism has been embedded in our DNA for generations. It is the faith-based belief that, as Ronald Reagan put it, America is a “shining city on a hill.” Do modern liberals believe that?

No issue is more entwined in paradox than free trade versus protectionism. Here’s the first. Polling suggests that voters recognize the benefits of free trade more now than at anytime in many years, even as the presidential candidates advocate more protectionism.

In a supremely weird election season the latest weird twist is the consensus emerging on Wall Street that Hillary Clinton would be better for financial markets than Donald Trump.

Late last year while playing tennis I reached up to serve and I felt a painful pop in my shoulder. The inflammation got worse over the next few months. Now anytime I try to put my arm above my head, pain shoots up my arm. I often wake up at night with an agonizing throb in my shoulder.

Early this week a top Republican consultant whined: “Donald Trump is hijacking the Republican party.”

If Donald Trump’s gravity-defying ascendancy has validated anything, it is that for middle America, jobs and economic security are still the dominant issue. Republicans have talked up tax reform, regulatory relief and fiscal restraint — and those are all critical to growth.

When I was a smart aleck college student I had a sign on my dorm door that read: “Reality is for those who can’t handle drugs.”

Barack Obama’s latest and last budget is nothing if not is a grandiose visionary document. No one — least of all Congress — paid much attention to it, because no one cares where this lamest of duck presidents wants the country to go fiscally. After $8 trillion of new debt added, he’s done enough trouble to our nation’s finances already.