Opinion

The new sound in Pacific Palisades: Hammers on nails

There’s a new sound in Pacific Palisades lately.

The Gavin Newsom probe is serious, and he knows it

Gavin Newsom and his "press office" aides-gone-wild have been trying to mock President Donald...

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup...

Pope Leo sends unmistakable message on immigrants during visit honoring America’s first saint

Pope Leo XIV honored St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, delivering his latest appeal on behalf of migrants amid friction with President Donald Trump.

Former Olympian among those charged with vandalizing Reflecting Pool, Trump vows immediate repairs: report

Multiple people were allegedly arrested for vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, prompting President Donald Trump to warn of serious jail time.

A mother’s letter, one vote, and the 72-year fight for the 19th amendment

On Aug. 18, 1920, a 24-year-old state legislator from East Tennessee walked into the Tennessee House chamber wearing a red rose on his lapel. Red meant no. The chamber was deadlocked 48-48. The 19th Amendment needed one more state, and Tennessee was the last realistic option. Harry Burn had a letter in his pocket from […]

Crooks and communists in James Ellroy’s latest epic

James Ellroy is one of the great American authors of the last 50 years, and yet, it is easy to dismiss his literary achievement. If you were to pick up his latest novel, Red Sheet, and turn to a random page, you’re likely to encounter such terse fragments as, “It was a sex-slash job. Cuts, […]

A narrator speaking to his dead beloved

“Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare” (“Love moved me, which makes me speak”). So declares Virgil to Dante at the outset of The Divine Comedy, explaining why he has come to serve as Dante’s guide through Hell: love set him in motion. Mark Helprin takes this line from Canto II of Inferno as the […]

Hunter the snark

It’s hard to keep a good man down, but it’s even harder to keep a bad man out. Hunter Biden is back. Best known as an influence-peddler, crackhead, whoremonger, struggling artist, and innocent man who got a presidential pardon from his father, the prodigal son and former first son reappeared on X, formerly Twitter, in […]

Democrats are literally the party of crazy people

Crazy is, admittedly, a bit of a pejorative term. But as a new study published by Political Behavior shows, not only have the negative connotations attached to mental health conditions fallen as the prevalence of mental illness risen, but an increasingly large percentage of Americans use mental health as a source of political identity, particularly […]

The decision to ban flag burning belongs to the people

Nearly 250 years after the Second Continental Congress adopted a resolution establishing the Stars and Stripes as the official flag of the United States, we mark another Flag Day celebrating Old Glory and the enduring freedom it represents. But this occasion also marks another year in which Congress no longer has the constitutional authority it […]

The lessons of America’s first flag outside the USA

Deep within Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle, inside the ancient fortress’s prison vaults, is the oldest depiction of the “Stars and Stripes” outside the United States. The carving on a wooden door dates to the American Revolutionary War, when prisoners-of-war were either locked in ships or sent to prisons overseas by the Royal Navy. The anonymous POW’s […]

Harold Bloom and his poet-correspondents

It was easy to admire Harold Bloom. One of the most distinguished American literary critics, he always gave the impression of having read anything and everything by the great and the good. Over the course of a 60-year writing career, he produced a steady stream of books that showcased the scope of his reading and […]

Go tell the Spartans: Two books on the conflicts that embroiled the Greek world

The late Southern writer Florence King once lamented that “a cornerstone of Western thought that has vanished without a trace is admiration for ancient Sparta.” There are good reasons why this should be so. Yet in the three decades since she penned those words, there has been a resurgence of “laconomania” at the popular and […]

Promises kept: Howard Lutnick on the anniversary of the deal that saved U.S. Steel

BRADDOCK, Pa. — In American politics, when negotiating hard deals that involve high risk and the livelihoods of all involved while requiring great compromise, pain is usually shared unequally. The rarest outcome is for all involved to be grateful. Yet that was the overwhelming sentiment expressed by the local union leaders, steel workers, plant managers, and […]

From upgrades to upsells

In the old days — we’re talking about the 2010s here — when you boarded a plane, and glanced with envy or disdain at the passengers sinking into their plush First-Class seats, you were looking at an assembly of road warriors. A traveling salesman might be resting his haunches in seat 2C. Your local congressman […]

Maggie O’Farrell’s land before time

Novelist Maggie O’Farrell always wanted to write the story of her great-great-grandfather, who lived in Ireland and worked for the Ordinance Survey, Britain’s mapping service, in the 1850s. And now she has.  Her vivid new novel, Land, features a surveyor and his family who are engulfed in the chaos of the era. These were perilous […]

Justice Department sets stage for end of racial hiring quotas

Is a reading comprehension test racist if fewer black people pass it than white people? Is a pushup requirement sexist if fewer women can pass it than men? For decades, employers have faced the impossible task of identifying objective measures to analyze job applicants while also ensuring the demographics of those who pass those tests […]

Justice at last for slain tourist Ethan Williams — but New York is still in his debt

As Jason Williams told his son’s killer before the judge Thursday, “You entered the story and violated our family, and you introduced an evil...

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