Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden appears to have painted himself into a corner with his promise to select a woman — and apparently from the candidates on his short list, an African-American woman — to be his running mate. While it is just the latest example of his party’s tribalism in which externals, such as […]

In rural Maine, where people often live far from neighbors and friends, the COVID-19 pandemic has layered in new kinds of isolation. The impact on school children has been tough: the daily structure, social interaction and intellectual stimulation they get from school was upended overnight. While Maine has given a “green light” to re-open schools, […]

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently took an important step toward addressing one of the worst public health crises of our time. No, not COVID-19, but a disease that chronically affects millions of Americans — diabetes. A new policy, announced last week, will dramatically reduce seniors’ out-of-pocket insulin costs. Diabetes remains one of […]

Back in the summer of 1979, I was 20 years old and skinny, and was studying Shakespeare and Victorian history at Cambridge University in England. We used to take the one-hour train ride into London to watch some of the greatest actors in the world, including Glenda Jackson as Cleopatra at the Aldwych Theatre, and […]

No other group has shown as much contempt for its own work during the coronavirus crisis as teachers. Their unions are actively fighting to keep kids out of the classroom, and also to limit remote instruction, lest it require too much time and attention from people who are supposed to be wholly devoted to educating […]

Europe took dramatic steps to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Its shutdowns were so tight that the eurozone economy has fallen into a recession even deeper than ours. But guess what. Despite occasional spikes, Europe has beaten the virus down to size. With a public reassured that it could return to the beaches, bars and restaurants […]

On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard tanks and mechanized infantry invaded oil-rich Kuwait, igniting a war that would have several names, among them Kuwait War and Persian Gulf War. Though the war’s major combat operation, Desert Storm, didn’t begin until January 1991, Desert Storm would become the pop nickname for […]

Traditionally, funerals are supposed to serve at least three purposes: honor the life of the deceased, comfort those who mourn his passing and preach a message about eternity and the brevity of life. Tradition was discarded during John Lewis’ funeral last week in Atlanta. Like the memorial service of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minnesota, […]

So Trader Joe’s won’t cave into a 17-year-old’s demand that it scrub its shelves of products named in such a way as to suggest cultural origins outside the 50 U.S. states. Briones Bedell, a white high schooler from the San Francisco Bay area, gave it a try. She ran a petition to, in her mind, […]

“Burn it down” is rarely a wise or prudent sentiment. A cadre of Republican opponents of President Donald Trump is nonetheless calling for a purifying fire to sweep through the GOP in the fall, taking down as many Republican officeholders as possible. Only this willy-nilly bloodletting will teach the party the hard lesson it needs […]