The Autumn 2017 issue of City Journal is forthcoming from the Manhattan Institute. It carries my short column “The unfunniest senator.” The column is about Al Franken and his McCarthyite ruminations on two of President Trump’s judicial nominees. Given Franken’s contribution to the blue slip controversy this week, the editors have made the column available online this afternoon. Please check it out.

I am grateful to editors Brian Anderson and Paul Beston for their care with the column and for finding a place for it it in this issue of the magazine. It appears in the issue along with Heather Mac Donald’s brilliant cover story “Are we all unconscious racists?,” which the editors have placed online as a preview.

City Journal is the Manhattan Institute’s beautifully produced quarterly journal of commentary on current events, politics, law, culture and history. Although it is a quarterly, it always seems to me like it’s on top of the news of the day. Regularly featuring the work of Heather Mac Donald, Myron Magnet, Stefan Kanfer and Theodore Dalrymple, among others, it is a remarkable magazine. Readers can subscribe here.