Along with the far left and far right in the U.S., Russian President Vladimir Putin holds the pieties of liberal democracy in contempt. His nation’s attacks on American hearts and minds, detailed in the long-awaited Mueller report, carried with them the spirit of the Joker in the Batman myth — a malevolent court jester motivated by venality, contempt for pretense and a craving for relevance and thrills.

Good Friday provided the language for a week that began with the terrible fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and ended with the long-awaited Mueller report: Jesus’ final words before perishing on the cross: “It is finished!”

The oral arguments the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday will be more decorous than the gusts of judicial testiness that blew the case up to the nation’s highest tribunal.

WASHINGTON — Some government foolishness has an educational value that compensates for its considerable cost. Consider the multibillion-dollar federal electric-vehicle tax credit, which efficiently illustrates how government can, with one act, diminish its already-negligible prestige while subtracting from America’s fairness.

WASHINGTON — At least he recognized the urgency.

WASHINGTON — So another norm of public decency falls, like a historical building demolished to make way for one of Donald Trump’s tasteless towers.

The Democrats’ presidential aspirants seem determined to prove that their party’s 2016 achievement — the election of the current president — was not a fluke that cannot be repeated. But the Republican Party, whose last remaining raison d’etre is to frustrate Democrats, seems to be thinking: We are determined to lose the 2020 election in order to foil Democrats’ attempts to lose it.

I’ll admit it: President Trump is right. There’s a crisis on the southern border.

Baloney is not free.