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AMERICA'S 12TH PRESIDENT died in July 1850 from a sudden attack of gastroenteritis, brought on by consuming a copious amount of cherries and iced milk on a blisteringly fetid Washington day. Perhaps never in history has a cold snack been so ill-advised, or led to such awful results.

The sudden death of Zachary Taylor, just 16 months into his presidency, was a tragedy in more ways than one.

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IN THE NAME of "strengthening our democracy," a Massachusetts legislator named Dylan Fernandes has introduced a bill to force Bay State citizens to vote in November general elections, whether they want to or not. In California, assemblyman Marc Levine goes even further: Declaring that "democracy is not a spectator sport," he has submitted legislation to strong-arm Californians into taking part in every election, including local and primary contests.

Their goal is to make democracy better, but their results would make it worse.

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AS A CANDIDATE for president in 2015, Donald Trump railed against birthright citizenship, a bedrock of US immigration law ever since the ratification of the 14th Amendment. The principle that anyone born on US soil is a US citizen is a sublime expression of American exceptionalism, not to mention one of the noblest achievements of the Republican Party, but Trump spoke of it with scorn.

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"In the bitter end," fumed a Wall Street Journal editorial the day after Donald Trump's impeachment trial concluded, "what has all of this accomplished? The House has defined impeachment down to a standard that will now make more impeachments likely."

Let's hope so.

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