Popular opinion has it that Washington, D.C., is filled with amoral, self-interested people who don’t really believe in anything save their own professional advancement. Of course, such people do exist. But their influence is short-lived. They come and go. Real influence comes from those who gain a reputation for their honesty, thoughtfulness, and selflessness. Those […]
The year: 1986. Two global superpowers have nuclear warheads pointed at each other. Many fear imminent war. “Two vivid characters meet over a weekend, on a desolate and windswept island, in a reputedly haunted house with rain lashing against its windowpanes, where they experience the most amazing things,” wrote Ken Adelman, President Ronald Reagan’s arms […]
Republicans in Washington usually want to empower workers and businesses to innovate and thrive. But they are pushing a bill that could create a massive new union that would crush the hopes and dreams of thousands of young athletes around the country. The bill is the so-called Protect College Sports Act, which claims to “stabilize […]
According to the 12 Democratic state attorneys general who sued this week to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the theatrical movie business is “a big business, and it is thriving.” That premise carries the states’ theory of harm, and it does not survive contact with the box office: ticket sales […]
Christopher Nolan, perhaps the greatest director in the world, is back with another winner. The man behind Oppenheimer (2023) now gives us The Odyssey, a movie adaptation of Homer’s ancient epic. The film is already a massive success. Making $264 million in its first week alone and sitting at 95% and above on Rotten Tomatoes, […]
My father died from a smoking-related disease. As a physician, I have seen versions of his story repeated too many times: patients who knew cigarettes were harming them, wanted to stop, tried to stop — and still could not fully break free. That experience shaped my view of public health long before I served as […]
First, let us get it clear: Human life begins not with birth but with the fertilized egg. As soon as the sperm inserts itself into the egg, there is a new human being in existence. He, not it, is very young, incapable of entering into contracts, and does not even look at all like the […]
As the costs of the Iran campaign mount and Congress fights over a bill to cover them, a familiar question is circulating in Washington: Did this war have to happen? It is the right question aimed at the wrong date. The honest ledger on this conflict does not open on Feb. 28, 2026, when the […]
In 1981, one of Washington’s most respected Democratic elder statesmen dismissed the new president as an “amiable dunce.” Clark Clifford, a former Secretary of Defense, said it at a dinner; the phrase leaked and became the era’s shorthand. Kind, but foolish. Likable, but lost. Forty years later, Gallup found that 69% of Americans, nearly half […]
When a federal bank examiner leans on a bank to close a customer’s account and that closure destroys the customer’s business, the government has taken private property without paying for it. That is a distinct constitutional claim, separate from the shareholder duty-of-care questions now working through the courts, and on June 10, the Department of […]
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spent about an hour Thursday afternoon at the Justice Department with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse. The meeting resolved nothing. Blanche told reporters afterward that the meeting was not entirely cordial because the survivors wanted “some form of justice” he did not believe he could deliver. The survivors described deflection […]
Democrats are beginning to discover a political opportunity in the public backlash against data centers. A new Politico poll finds that Americans’ views on data centers have grown increasingly negative and politically polarized, with Democrats more likely than Republicans to oppose building data centers in their communities. That should be a warning to Republicans but […]
On the morning of July 4, someone in Houston, Texas, cut two surveillance cameras in half and draped an American flag over the wreckage. In New Bern, North Carolina, police asked the public to help identify two men filmed destroying a camera — the public responded with hundreds of tips identifying the suspects as Batman […]
