Good morning. There was so much bad news this weekend, including violence at home and tragedy in Texas. We will have more to say about both of those things a bit later today.

Is it fair to call Donald Trump a "great" president but not a "good" one. Longtime Tribune voice Richard Longworth made that case Sunday in our Opinion section.

We also had a lot of content this weekend relating to July 4, including our take on the state of American democracy (not overtly threatened, but under stress) and our insistence that naturalized citizens should never be seen as less than native-born citizens. The U.S. has plenty of time to review such applications and once the decision is made, we argue, it should be final. Finally, we also wrote about the coming 250th birthday of America. Will we see a repeat of the unity that accompanied the Bicentennial? Don't hold your breath, we say.

Steve Chapman, a former board member who now writes must-read columns for us, weighs on these patriotic matters, too. You'll find a link below

We also took a look this weekend at the troubling decimation of the public universities in Indiana by legislators who clearly don 't understand academe. We're no knee-jerk defenders of the academy, but the board argues that the damage being done in Bloomington, Indiana with a blunt cudgel has been reprehensible to say the least.

Elsewhere, our columnist Clarence Page worries about the Democrats' future, our Opinion section considers the future of the "diaper bank," and one of Chicago's longtime tourism booters argues on our pages that you really, really should be talking up the city we all love.

All that and your letters, too. We have a bumper crop of impassion missives today.

Have a great start to your week.

— Chris Jones, editorial page editor

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