WASHINGTON — Winston Churchill famously described Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” The same might be said — and the Russia reference is no coincidence — of Paul Manafort and the trial now underway of President Trump’s former campaign chairman.

My grandfather, who was a dairy farmer, would often say, “farmers do not need to go into a casino to gamble. They do it every single day, just going to work.”

WASHINGTON — The most frustrating aspect of the backlash against President Trump’s servility to Russian President Vladimir Putin is that nothing that happened last week in Helsinki should have surprised us.

Being a middle child is like being one of those presidents between Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah, you made it, but does anyone really care? Anyone saddled with this fate had better get used to being overlooked and shortchanged.

Under a perverse interpretation of federal law, tax-exempt nonprofit organizations supposedly devoted to “social welfare” can spend large amounts of money to influence elections without publicly disclosing the identities of their donors. But instead of cracking down on the use of “dark money” for political purposes, the Internal Revenue Service has decided to stop requiring these groups to reveal even to the government the sources of their funding.

“This human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.”

Two decades ago, Americans hoped the slaughter of students at Columbine High School would prove to be a horrible aberration, an event provoked by some bizarre confluence of causes unlikely to be repeated.

At a time when immigration and indeed the very nature of America’s heritage is being reexamined, it is worth considering the history of one of America’s greatest icons: the Statue of Liberty.

WASHINGTON — My fellow Americans, we are a deeply stupid nation.