Democrats centered Vice President Kamala Harris' election campaign around the threat to American democracy posed by former President Donald Trump's possible return to office. The issue may not weigh on voters' minds as heavily as the economy, but it does resonate; polls show that Americans trust Harris more to counter political extremism and preserve democracy.... Read More

Corporations enjoy many of the same rights and protections as individual citizens, the Supreme Court ruled in 2010. Not only may a corporation claim the right of freedom of religion to, for example, refuse to cover birth control under employee insurance, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission found that the First Amendment grants it the... Read More

I fantasize about a government that tries to act like it is, if not quite by the people, at least for the people and thus internalizes the principle that the people deserve to be treated like fully vested adults rather than idiotic children. Nothing about what the media calls the "migrant crisis" withstands the slightest... Read More

Many people who typically vote Republican but dislike former President Donald Trump, and others who typically vote Democratic but dislike Vice President Kamala Harris, are wrestling with a fundamental dilemma of the voter who lives in a duopoly. A vote is an endorsement. A vote declares to the world: "I approve of this candidate." There... Read More

Mainstream American political leaders regularly argue that the United States adheres to, defends and promotes a "rules-based international order." What's that? It's rarely defined. The best summary I've been able to find was articulated by John Ikenberry of Princeton University, introduced by the Financial Times in 2023 as "an influential scholar whose former pupils populate... Read More

If someone said something I found annoying or offensive, my mother taught me, the appropriate response was to allow them to finish speaking and reply with a calm, considered counterargument. Now you're supposed to talk over them until they shut up. Or, better yet, cut their mic and show them the door. Censorship has become... Read More

Responding to polls that show that voters are worried and angry about the high cost of housing, both major parties are floating plans to make buying a home more affordable. Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats want to encourage new housing construction and subsidize first-time homebuyers by $25,000, which economists worry would have an... Read More

"Get a job!" That's the cliched response to panhandlers and anyone else who complains of being broke. But what if you can't? That dilemma is the crux of an evolving silent crisis that threatens to undermine the foundation of the American economic model. Two-thirds of gross domestic product, most of the economy, is fueled by... Read More

The U.S. government wastes approximately $4.5 trillion each year. "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money," Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican, famously said, and said often. In this case, you're talking about thousands of billions. (Four and a half trillion dollars is the sum total of... Read More

The United States is one of the most politically polarized countries in the world. Because effective lawmaking requires bipartisanship, and members of Congress are, like their constituents, at their most ideologically divided point in a half-century, cooperation is in increasingly short supply. As a result — or, more precisely, nonresult — the U.S. Congress passes... Read More

Anyone who has experience haggling at a flea market has intuited the basics of negotiating. If a seller offers the item you want at a fire-sale price that you're unlikely to find elsewhere, smile, pay the asking price and walk away before they change their mind. If the requested price is many times higher than... Read More

Then-Sen. Barack Obama's 2008 run, a classic identity play, emphasized the history-making potential of electing the nation's first Black president. No one knew or cared much about Obama's policy positions, and he didn't bother to share them. Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 bids were policy arguments focused around a succinct set of issues: student... Read More

Democrats were relieved when President Joe Biden finally pulled out of the presidential race. That was understandable. It was easy to see why they quickly coalesced behind Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden's replacement: Time was short, there's no standard party process for putting on a snap second round of primaries, and passing over a... Read More

Poor us . Poor United States. Poor Democratic Party. We've been suckered. While we were fearfully obsessing over the ethically challenged former President Donald Trump, a much more talented grifter — President Joe Biden, along with his hidden passel of coconspirators — conned the electorate, the news media and most of his own party's leaders... Read More

With the exception of those who explain themselves, like John Wilkes Booth and Leon Czolgosz, political assassins tend to take their motives to the grave. Though the real reasons for their acts tend to be personal to the point of quirky — like John Hinckley hoping to impress Jodie Foster — Americans often point the... Read More

Why, frustrated Democrats are asking, is the news media ignoring signs that former President Donald Trump is (also) suffering cognitive impairment? Why are they focusing on President Joe Biden's debate performance and calling on him, but not Trump, following his conviction on 34 felony counts, to drop out of the campaign? You have reasonable questions,... Read More

President Joe Biden's unsteady performance in last week's presidential debate has sparked a debate of its own between Democrats: between those who believe the president's chances of reelection have dropped so dramatically that he should be replaced as their nominee, and loyalists determined to stay the course lest the fragile coalition between corporatists and progressives... Read More

Serendipity plays such a starring role in our lives that we never stop to ask ourselves whether we ought to accept it. A random event, especially one that turns out to be your "big break," becomes a charming story — even though, really, such happenstance is an indictment of a system that is no system... Read More

The American packet ship Poland was traveling from New York to Normandy when, in May 1840, it was struck by lightning. A fire broke out. A Bostonian later recalled that one fellow passenger, a Frenchman, responded to the captain's call to abandon ship with the suggestion that seats on the lifeboats go to "women and... Read More

When residents of the Middle East woke up on the morning of Oct. 7, the Palestinian cause was in a sorry state. Seven hundred thousand radical Israeli settler-colonists and sealed-off "military zones" occupied 60% of the occupied West Bank, which was blockaded by a Berlin-style border wall, so much that the United Nations human rights... Read More

At any given time, millions of Americans are involved in either a criminal case or civil lawsuit at some level of the local, state or federal court system. Very few people reach the end of their lives without encountering judges and juries charged with determining the fate of their freedom and savings accounts. For most... Read More

If you don't understand your enemies and their motivations, Sun Tzu counseled, victory will elude you. Part of the reason President Joe Biden's polls are so awful is that Democrats and their supporters don't have a clue what is driving former President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. The answer would shock many of them.... Read More

When my landlord's management company informed me that they hadn't received my rent check, I was surprised. As is true of most Americans, housing is by far my biggest expense, so of course I noticed when the money vanished from my account. The mystery deepened when I conjured up an image of the canceled check... Read More

Your boss can't fire you because of the color of your skin. He can't get rid of you because he doesn't like your religion. Federal law protects you against employment discrimination based on your sex, race, pregnancy status, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information or (if you are over 40) age. Should... Read More

It is a truism bordering on a cliche that the Israeli state and Palestinian resistance organizations have inflicted violence upon each other, claiming the lives of thousands of innocent people on both sides. Media coverage of the carnage has been anything but evenhanded, however. Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Western... Read More