There is nothing sacred about nine. The number was not carried down from a mountain on stone tablets, nor did it appear in a burning bush. In fact, before the Supreme Court contained nine justices, it contained six, the number fixed when the tribunal was established in 1789. Then, in an ...

“A crony anti-infrastructure plan” is, sadly, the best description of the Joe Biden administration’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan. It’s insanely expensive and unnecessary, especially coming, as it does, on top of last year’s fiscal insanity. Over the past year, our ...

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m ever going to get over how some humans have behaved during this pandemic. First, the good news: As of this week, more than 65 million people in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Millions more are well on their way. Now, the pull-out-your-hair ...

Apparently, Robert Pape was surprised. Notwithstanding earlier research or the alarm raised in this and other forums, Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, expected, when he began studying the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, to find the rioters acted out ...

Seventeen legislatures are considering laws that would dictate how medical personnel can treat transgender youth — the latest flashpoint in the culture war. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson surprised observers this week when he vetoed one of those bills. It would have outlawed puberty blockers, ...

America is on trial. Or at least, that is the conviction of many observers as Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, faces judge and jury in the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man. America on trial: it’s a headline in Time, the Toronto Star and ...

So, it seems the church is shrinking. The mosque and synagogue, too, for that matter. Not that this is breaking news. It has long been known that the numbers of Americans who belong to religious organizations are dwindling. But last week, that decline hit a milestone. For the first time since ...

Dear Republicans: Let’s just say this plainly. You are a people lacking integrity and honor. And you have not a thimbleful of respect for one of this nation’s most sacred principles: Meaning equality under the law. One person, one vote. That harsh appraisal is necessitated by your ...

“This is a violent civilization — if civilization’s where I am.” — Gil Scott- Heron, “Gun” Alexis Knutson doesn’t want to see her friend reduced. That friend, she told The New York Times, “had the biggest, brightest smile. She always just had these dimples that, especially ...

We need to talk about what happened last week when police confronted a mentally disturbed man at a convenience store near Washington, D.C. They helped him. Yes, that was a bait-and-switch. But it wouldn’t have worked if you weren’t primed to expect something worse. Certainly, you’d be ...

He was having a bad day. So said Cherokee County Sheriff’s spokesman Jay Baker by way of explaining last week’s mass shootings at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. The suspect, a 21-year-old white man whose name won’t be used here, is said to have told police he suffers a sex addiction ...

On the issue of guns, John Kavanagh has a record unblemished by sanity. Indeed, a scroll through Vote Smart, the nonpartisan, nonprofit voter information clearinghouse, suggests the Arizona state lawmaker has never met a pro-gun measure he didn’t like. That includes bills authorizing ...

Dear Sen. Tim Scott: Sadly, it is no longer much of a surprise when an official of your party says some racially offensive thing. From calling Barack Obama “uppity” and “boy,” to decrying an imaginary “war on whites,” to declaring the world’s Black and brown nations ...

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. This scared my mother to death. I don’t know that she ever found a flattened penny in the pocket of his jeans or heard it ...

My brother-in-law died of hogwash. Another brother-in-law, a sister-in-law, two daughters-in-law, two cousins and several grandchildren are all recovering from hogwash. My wife spent a week in the hospital with hogwash. I tested positive for hogwash, but had few symptoms. “Hogwash,” ...

I didn’t watch much of this year’s CPAC. My digestion is sound, but there’s no point in taking unnecessary risks. Still, I did note the presence of Sen. Mike Lee, a legislator who styles himself a “constitutional conservative.” Lee is the son of a distinguished former solicitor ...

No, Dr. Seuss hasn’t been “canceled.” Granted, you’d never know it from the ruckus that erupted after Theodor Seuss Geisel’s estate decided to stop publishing six lesser-known titles by the celebrated children’s book author because they contained offensive racial stereotypes. ...

For a nation that supposedly believes in democracy, America spends a lot of time trying to kill it. In the postbellum era, white Democrats — the conservatives of that day — murdered hundreds of African Americans and forcibly seized state governments in order to disenfranchise Black ...

There has always been something faintly Old Testament about the way we Americans pick our presidents. Remember the first election of the 21st century when, by a 2-to-1 margin in national polls, voters found the country to be “headed in the right direction” and the then-term-limited ...

You’re not reading this on a smartphone or tablet, are you? I hope not, for your sake. They say the government can use imperceptible fluctuations in the light to reprogram your brain waves, giving them complete control over your thoughts and actions. You’ll be Joe Biden’s zombie and you ...