Columnist.
On Friday, six months after Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency and began issuing shutdown orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court takes up a threshold question: Were the governor's commands lawful?
As a voter, I have two rules of thumb: (1) I don't vote for incumbents, and (2) I don't vote for Kennedys.
Three soaring flagpoles stand on the plaza outside the entrance to Boston's city hall. Two of the flagpoles are almost never disturbed — one always flies the American and POW-MIA flags, and the second displays the flag of Massachusetts. But what flies from the third flagpole varies.
On the eve of its national convention this week, the Republican Party decided not to adopt a new platform for 2020. In so doing, it ended an unbroken tradition dating back to 1856, when the first Republican convention committed itself to opposing slavery, supporting the admission of Kansas as a free state, and building a railroad to the Pacific Ocean. The GOP produced 41 platforms in the ensuing 164 years, but there will be no 42nd one this year.
The political world has been in quite an uproar over whether the Trump administration is trying to sabotage the US Postal Service in order to undermine mail-in voting in this year's elections.
For the first time ever, a Muslim state on the Arabian Gulf has embraced peace with Israel. But what is most noteworthy is what was not required to make it happen.
In the Great 2020 Presidential Debate Debate, each side's motives are obvious. For months, Donald Trump's campaign has been calling for more than the three scheduled televised face-offs with Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Trader Joe's pushes back against a gratuitous accusation of racism.
One of my litmus tests for political candidates is generosity. Other things being equal, I'm inclined to vote for candidates who are prepared to spend money on worthy causes.
Democrats are increasingly confident of pulling off a trifecta in November — defeating Donald Trump, winning a majority of the Senate, and remaining in charge of the House of Representatives.
Eager to do her part to demonstrate "solidarity with Black Lives Matter," the chair of the English Department at Rutgers University, Rebecca Walkowitz, recently sent a 3,400-word email on the subject to staff, students, and faculty members.
The time for convicts to regain the vote is after their debt to society has been paid.
If Donald Trump beats Joe Biden in November, voters can expect four more years of pointless trade conflicts, self-defeating protectionism, inflated costs for domestic companies, and wasted taxpayer dollars. If Biden beats Trump, voters can expect the same.
China's draconian new national security law for Hong Kong took effect on July 1. The arrests began at once.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously this week that presidential electors can be compelled to back their states' popular vote winner in the Electoral College — and that states can punish "faithless electors" who refuse to do so. The justices' decision means that the 2020 presidential election will be decided the way American presidential elections are always decided.
The Gallup poll has been measuring public opinion on the subject of immigration since 1965, regularly asking respondents whether the flow of immigrants to the United States should "be kept at its present level, increased, or decreased." Over the years the numbers have fluctuated greatly, but one finding has never changed: The percentage wanting less immigration always exceeded the percentage wanting more immigration.
Until recently it would never have occurred to me that Donald Trump and Ted Kennedy had anything in common, at least not when it came to politics. That changed this month, when Trump was asked in a pair of interviews what he would do with a second term as president, and both times delivered a cringe-inducingly incoherent non-answer.
Like countless readers, I have long been a Terry Teachout fan. I've never met him in person; I know him only through his writing as the Wall Street Journal's theater critic and Commentary magazine's critic-at-large.
Each year as Independence Day approaches, John Adams's famous letter of July 3, 1776, to his wife Abigail is recalled and widely quoted.
