The front page of the May 13 Washington Times was sobering. "President Biden's second 100 days are off to a woeful start, including a gas shortage for much of the East Coast, a surge of inflation, a slowdown in hiring despite a record number of job openings, renewed fighting in the Middle Ea…

When it comes to the great American work ethic, our country is hurtling down the wrong path. The Biden administration is putting America into an increasingly dangerous situation by creating a permanent class of people who simply don't want to work, preferring instead to sit at home and colle…

Subsidized day care and universal pre-K are goals that sound so wholesome only a ghoul could oppose them. Especially in an era when Democrats and Republicans have achieved consensus that money grows on trees, who could possibly object to spending a few hundred billion or so, as Biden has pro…

One might say that the big drama on this planet has been one of “the Living and the Dead.” The earth started out lifeless, and then something special happened: life arose.

The good news is that come June, the European Union will open its borders to Americans who have been vaccinated. On the other hand, many European countries are in disarray as they try to bring under control the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic scourge.

When told to wear face masks two COVID-plagued winters ago, we thought: "Can't wait until this is over and we no longer have to wear a piece of cloth over our mouth and nose. It's ugly. It interferes with breathing. It muffles voices and makes some conversations hard to follow."

There are many reasons to reflect on the historical significance of President Joe Biden’s first joint address to Congress. It was a great speech by a man who understands why he is in this role, in this time. He knows who we need him to be, and isn’t that a relief.

So Virginia has voted to allow marijuana (a.k.a. cannabis) to join the list of mind-altering drugs that are legal for adults to use.

So much has been said about the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin – and so little has been mentioned about the jurors who decided the case.

As of last week, more than 40% of Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 26% are fully vaccinated. Though it wasn't planned this way, more normal human life is returning just as the redbuds, azaleas, magnolias and tulips are performing their gorgeous annual aff…

Finland is the world's happiest country – fourth year in a row! So says the World Happiness Report, produced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The United States ranks 14th, right behind Ireland and ahead of Canada.

It’s Wednesday morning. I sign into the eighth one-on-one student videoconference but immediately see that, on this call, with this cherished student, there’s no oxygen for talking about the final, mundane details of spring semester. The young Black woman looking at me through the computer s…

I’ve been remembering a special moment back near the end of my first decade of living on the side of a forest-covered mountain on the western flank of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, back in the 1990s:

I sat there trying to remember how to breathe.

The season for potentially violent street protests is upon us, sparked by the latest police shooting of a Black man in a suburb of Minneapolis.

Reliving the awful details of George Floyd's slow suffocation is brutal and emotionally draining. As always in matters touching on race, the thrum of ethnic hostilities is the background noise. Some have been eager, since the trial began, to cite George Floyd's drug use or heart trouble as t…

It wasn't even close. The final count was 1,798 against and 738 for, 71% to 29%.

One might say that I was fated to see “creativity” as something of great value.

As a child, I was taught to respect authority figures. As it was explained to me, clergy, teachers, police officers and others help shape and maintain a just society.

Kristine Hostetter is a fourth-grade teacher in San Clemente, California. Her husband has been a big promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and she appears to be supporting his lunatic efforts. As the story is being told, liberal parents and students temporarily forced Hostetter's removal …

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm ever going to get over how some humans have behaved during this pandemic.

The Biden administration has already brought a certain measure of normalcy to the management of foreign policy, that is to say upon the duopoly of two nations that challenge the national interests of the United States – Russia and China. Strategically, both of them are classified as “competi…

I’m ready for a new mission.

The differences between an ideologue – someone who subscribes completely to a political ideology (whether conservative or liberal) and a pragmatist – someone who is concerned almost exclusively with the practical results of a specific public policy – is the biggest divide in American politics.

"We are not supporting doing any vaccine passports in the state of Florida," declared Gov. Ron DeSantis. "It's completely unacceptable," he said, for either government or the private sector to require showing proof of vaccination against COVID-19 "to just simply participate in normal society."

A few weeks ago, this column focused on the need for citizens who are unhappy with the state of our political and justice systems to speak up about their concerns.

This much can be said without fear of contradiction: There has been a spike in disgusting crimes against Asian Americans during the past year. One analysis of 16 of the country's largest cities found that acts of anti-Asian bias, not just crimes, increased by 145% between 2019 and 2020, even…

This week, I had an email exchange with a person who had every reason to be disappointed in me.

For something like 60 years, I’ve been driven to understand the Big Picture. Although I focus particularly on the human world, I also try to comprehend the rest of what we’re part of – from things at the smallest level (like subatomic particles and quarks) through the story of life on Earth …

When will we be able to attend a live performance? That question is being asked angrily in France, where theater is more central to the national culture. (America has no national theater.) But we should ask that here as well. Broadway remains shuttered, as are indoor theaters and concert hal…

With Democrats now in control of the House, Senate and White House, many of the most significant policy battles of the next two years will be determined by intraparty fights within the Democratic Party's various factions.

And now there are 11. Eleven jurisdictions in the United States have now legalized the act of suicide when it is the product of consultation between a terminally ill patient and a qualified medical person.

Biden has surprised me.

Undocumented immigrants have been surging to the U.S. border, some wearing T-shirts with the Biden campaign logo and the words "Please let us in!" What gave them the idea that they could just show up and come on in? President Joe Biden did.

We need to talk about what happened last week when police confronted a mentally disturbed man at a convenience store near Washington, D.C.

"This is a violent civilization – if civilization's where I am."

There is nothing sacred about nine.

How to explain Joe Biden's ideological transformation over the years? Perhaps it's the same as the explanation of why the chameleon's complexion changes when he moves from desert to forest: adaptation to local terrain.

Baseball is back, and not a moment too soon. America – and especially Washington – in 2021 desperately needs the values and the constancy of baseball. Nobody put baseball better than did war hero, team owner and American original Bill Veeck: "Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a ve…

The acrid atmosphere last week at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, with its vivid murals of the 18th-century British seafarer James Cook's discoveries throughout the Pacific, sounds very much like the acrid atmosphere almost exactly 60 years ago in the Beaux-Arts American and Sov…

It sometimes feels as though our democracy is broken, and I wonder if it is our own fault. We have the right to know what our government does on our behalf, but we have become an apathetic citizenry, apparently not caring enough to speak up when we don't like how politicians run the governme…

There were many times, I'm sure, when my mother was disappointed in me, but one memory is seared into my brain like rice scorched into the bottom of a forgotten pot on the stove. Imagine it's your mom's favorite pot. The one she inherited from the good grandmother.

Hello, it's me again, your freshly vaccinated columnist, here to tell you about Dose No. 2.

There are two reasons I’ve been preoccupied with how the majority of the Republican base has so thoroughly bought the big lie about the election being stolen: Because that lie

Shortly after the cooling of the earth when I was a younger man, I managed political campaigns for governor, for mayor, for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. Some of my candidates, in spite of my brilliant managing, actually won. I learned early on that the legendary Speaker of the Califor…

A bit of optimism, such as President Biden is trying to instill, is in the national interest. It is something that should be enhanced for the single overarching reason that America needs to show the world that it still has the moral strength and the sheer gumption to emerge stronger from a c…

I need to turn away from contemplating the ugly things before our eyes these days, and look at something that nourishes the spirit. Like being grateful.

My brother-in-law died of hogwash.

When my brother was a boy, he loved to leave pennies on the railroad tracks up the street from our house and wait for the freight train to flatten them as it zoomed by.