Columnist.
The story of American pluralism began with the migration of Puritan separatists, who came to the New World seeking a haven where they could practice their faith as they saw fit.
As the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio was an authoritarian and incompetent disgrace to public service.
Donald Trump's intermittent grudge against Amazon recently flared up anew.
To be free, by definition, is to make choices that others may not favor.
Six weeks ago, on the Fourth of July, North Korea for the first time tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Berkshire Museum has been catching all kinds of hell ever since it announced this month that it will auction off 40 works of art from its collection, which focuses on art, natural history, and ancient civilization.
This fall, the National Institutes of Health will launch a major study to determine whether regular consumption of alcohol helps prevent heart attacks. The clinical trial will comprise nearly 8,000 participants, recruited from 16 sites in North and South America, Europe, and Africa. The volunteers will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: Those in the first group will have one drink each day, while those in the other group abstain. This enormous study will come with an enormous price tag: more than $100 million.
Republicans will pay a heavy price for breaking their promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act. For seven years, the GOP vowed to eliminate the unwise, unpopular law, and during Barack Obama's years in the White House, Republican legislators voted for repeal dozens of times. But once there was a president prepared to sign repeal legislation, Republicans choked.
It made headlines in 2011 when two New York City taxi medallions changed hands for $1 million apiece. At the time, it was the highest price ever recorded for one of the numbered metal tags that are required to lawfully operate a cab on the city's streets.
The stranger rang the doorbell. Five minutes later, she was sobbing in our living room.
Lordy, how the mean girls jeered when Energy Secretary Rick Perry offered some extemporaneous words of encouragement to workers at a coal-fired power plant in West Virginia last week.
"At some point I'm gonna be so presidential that you people will be so bored," Donald Trump took to telling campaign rallies and TV interviewers in the spring of 2016. "I'll come back as a presidential person, and instead of 10,000 people, I'll have about 150 people. And they'll say: 'But, boy, he really looks presidential!'" Of course it was never Trump's intention to "come back as a presidential person" — that was the whole point of his smirking declaration. Seriousness and self-control don't fill arenas with pumped-up crowds, and for Trump the crowds have always been the priority.
As Independence Day approaches this year, there is less independence in my days.
Remember how liberal politicians promised to tone down the partisan rhetoric after a heavily armed Bernie Sanders fan opened fire on GOP lawmakers taking batting practice on June 14? Remember how they signed on to a "pledge of civility?" Remember how they said they would use the near-massacre as a jolt that "brings us together"?
You wouldn't deliberately snatch food and medicine away from malnourished people. Nor, I'm sure, would you hire somebody else with explicit instructions to deprive suffering families of their basic needs.
Massachusetts voters have made some reckless choices over the years (two words: Barney Frank), but on the subject of income taxes their judgment has been consistently prudent and restrained.
When the renowned American industrialist Henry Clay Frick died in 1919, the obituaries didn't exactly overflow with tenderness.
Today's political climate being what it is, anything a president proposes gets condemned out of hand by lawmakers from the other party. So of course President Trump's proposal last week for privatizing the US air-traffic control system was no sooner announced than a slew of top Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and his House counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, proclaimed their opposition.
Here is a tale of two socioeconomic trends and one seductive myth.
