Do parallel universes exist? I have proof that one does. I confirmed the hypothesis in a manner very like that of the young Isaac Newton, who was sitting in a garden when an apple dropped on his head. I was standing in a convenience store when a Sunday New York Times dropped on my foot. Newton, in a stroke of brilliant insight, comprehended gravity. I, in a throb of bruised toe, opened the April 22, 2018, Sunday Review section.

“Birtherism”—the ugly term for the even uglier charge that Barack Obama was not born in the United States—always suffered from one fatal flaw: a birth announcement that appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser on August 13, 1961, declaring the arrival of young Barack.

In March, six months into the fiscal year and after a contentious and prolonged negotiation that included a brief shutdown of the federal government, Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress finally passed a full-year appropriations bill for the federal government—a $1.3 trillion behemoth stuffed with all manner of provisions that ensured the votes to pass it. The legislation provides substantial new funding for just about everything the government does. In particular, Republicans had to agree to large increases in domestic appropriations in order to secure the needed funds for national defense.

A particularly shameless example of this never-ending navel-gazing was a briefing the State Department held last week upon the release of its 2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The latest edition of this document, issued annually by congressional mandate since 1977, describes the condition of freedom in almost 200 countries and territories. Its publication is an important event, and not just because it highlights, in sometimes excruciating detail, abuses that many regimes around the world would prefer be kept quiet. These reports are some of the most-read on any U.S. government website and, as the department explains, “are used by a variety of actors, including the U.S. Congress, the Executive branch, and the Judicial branch as a factual resource for decision making in matters ranging from assistance to asylum.”

Forget the House. History, an unprecedented number of GOP retirees, and a president who is not terribly popular—all this means Democrats should easily capture the 23 seats needed to take control of the House, the downscale chamber.