It was another rollicking week in the world of politics, which is admittedly not saying much in the era of Trump. It was revealed this week that the death toll on Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria was not just higher than had been officially reported, but at least seventy times higher, and in fact was more than twice as high as the death toll from Hurricane Katrina. You'd think this would be a gigantic media story, but (sadly) you would be wrong. Just like everything else about the devastation, most certainly including the media's treatment of it, this bombshell report was largely ignored this week. No wonder Puerto Ricans feel like second-class citizens, when they keep getting second-class treatment like this.

There was even a handy "story hook" the media could have used: this year's hurricane season just began. But instead, all anyone wanted to talk about on the news was Roseanne and (later in the week) Samantha Bee. More on all of these stories later, down in the awards section of the column.

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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.

Women's groups have been trying to get an amendment guaranteeing equality between the sexes under the law since the times of the suffragettes. After several early efforts to do so failed, in 1972 the following amendment was approved by both houses of Congress:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

It was thus sent to the states for ratification (the president has no part to play in the amendment process, it's worth pointing out). Initially, it had a deadline of March 22, 1979 -- in other words, if it hadn't been ratified by enough states by that date, it would turn into a pumpkin.

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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.

Gowdy, please remember, was in the briefing that was supposed to reveal the smoking gun. But since the briefing, Nunes hasn't uttered a peep about it, leading many to conclude that it was yet another example of the smoking gun being found in Nunes's hand, right after he had used it to shoot himself in the foot. The facts didn't fit his wild theory, therefore he went mum on the whole subject. Gowdy, to his credit (a line I never personally thought I would ever type), stepped up instead.

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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.

ABC knew all of this when they agreed to the reboot. You can picture the executives holding their collective breath, waiting to see whether Roseanne Barr could avoid spouting off on Twitter about conspiracies or outright racism. Today, they were forced to exhale, after the flood of tweets proved Roseanne Barr was a risk not worth taking.

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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.

If ever there was a week to begin with a Nineteen Eighty-Four metaphor, this was the week. President Donald Trump, reportedly fearful that Kim Jong Un was on the brink of pulling out of the proposed Singapore summit meeting, decided to pre-emptively pull out of the meeting himself. It had all the flavor of a teenage girl insisting: "You can't break up with me -- I'm breaking up with you!"

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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.

Today, Donald Trump officially pulled out of the planned summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. However, this might not be as shocking as it sounds, because North Korea was already seriously backing away from the meeting. Meaning Trump might just have cancelled a meeting that wasn't going to take place anyway, purely to get his own name in the news. It's certainly within the realm of possibility.

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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.

This has touched off a round of speculation about the race, centered on whether Abrams can actually win or not, in such a red state so deep in the South. From where I sit, though, she seems to have a pretty good chance at doing so (although it is by no means guaranteed).

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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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