Columnist.
When going to war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was popular, Joe Biden was for going to war.
Next week, Americans will pause to honor the civil rights giant whose famous dream was of a society in which no one would be judged by the color of their skin. This week, however, some Americans who claim to care deeply about civil rights are judging the Democratic candidates who will debate Tuesday night by the color of their skin.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but another Democratic presidential debate is coming. It's scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday at Drake University in Des Moines.
Two days after the US drone strike in Iraq that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iraqi parliament passed a measure directing the government to oust American troops from its soil. The following day, a senior Marine Corps commander sent a letter notifying Iraqi officials that US forces "respect your sovereign decision to order our departure," and would begin preparations for "movement out of Iraq." So US troops are finally heading home? Of course not.
When Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were in the White House, about 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time.
Twenty-three years ago, visiting Germany for the first time, I was startled to discover that synagogues and other Jewish sites were guarded round-the-clock by the police.
You think the Grinch had a bad attitude toward Christmas? He had nothing on Increase Mather, one of colonial Boston's most celebrated Puritan clergyman.
If you're like most Americans, you don't think much of Congress.
There was a moment, just before the end of last night's Democratic debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, when Elizabeth Warren seemed to be on the point of directly answering an awkward question.
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives, voting almost entirely along party lines, will impeach President Donald Trump.
Demonizing the rich and condemning disparities of wealth have been pillars of Democratic Party politics for decades.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union enforced a policy known as the the Brezhnev Doctrine. It declared that no communist country would be permitted to voluntarily leave what Moscow called "the world socialist system."
The Israeli press is focused these days on the political and legal travails of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader who has been prime minister since 2009 and has now been indicted in bribery, fraud, and influence-peddling scandals.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president in 1932, it was from a wheelchair. He was a paraplegic who had lost the ability to walk after contracting polio, and some of his advisers worried that opponents might use his handicap against him, exploiting public ignorance for political gain.
On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual report on hate crimes in the United States. The total number of such crimes tabulated by the bureau in 2018 was down from the year before — it dropped from 7,175 to 7,120 — so you might have thought the report would be covered as a good-news story. But hate crime statistics are invariably spun as evidence that things are getting worse, and the headlines fit the usual pattern:
Cosmetologists and emergency medical technicians don't have much in common. Cosmetologists treat skin, style hair, and paint nails. EMTs respond to 911 calls, administer urgent medical care, and rush patients by ambulance to hospitals. Cosmetologists are beauty-industry professionals who help people feel good about their appearance. EMTs are first responders who help people survive violent traumas and heart attacks. Cosmetologists rarely face a life-threatening crisis on the job. EMTs make life-or-death decisions every day. But there is one thing cosmetologists and EMTs do have in common: Both must be licensed by the state.
Near the start of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan laments to Nick Carraway that white Americans, who should be "the dominant race," are being swamped by inferior foreigners. He urges Nick to read a book — "'The Rise of the Colored Empires' by this man Goddard" — that explains how imperiled people of their kind are becoming.
November is National Adoption Month, so it is fitting that the Trump administration has just taken a step that will make it a little easier to find permanent homes for children who need them.
In Massachusetts, an emotionally troubled young man commits suicide. The state accuses the victim's girlfriend of coercing him to kill himself through a campaign of relentless psychological abuse. Prosecutors point in particular to a barrage of text messages urging the boyfriend to end his life, and berating him cruelly when he hesitated.
