WASHINGTON – It is almost a law of our political physics: Those who choose to leave Congress thereby demonstrate qualities that make one wish they would linger here longer. After seven terms in the House, which followed eight years in…

WASHINGTON – Think of the Iranian uprising as a bottom-up revolt by people who feel they’ve been ignored by a corrupt elite. The issues and the faces in the street are very different from those of the populist movements that…

President Trump is given to lurid rhetoric, and in the MS-13 gang he finally has met a subject beyond his ability to exaggerate. He calls members of the largely Salvadoran gang “animals.” He charges them with “spreading gruesome bloodshed.” He…

WASHINGTON – Today’s political discord is less durable and dangerous than a consensus, one that unites the political class more than ideology divides it. The consensus is that, year in and year out, in good times and bad, Americans should…

In his first year in office, President Trump has done many positive things – from enforcing former President Barack Obama’s red line in Syria to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, driving the Islamic State…

Last year’s best movie about a spirited band of resisters fighting an empire of evil isn’t the latest entry in the “Star Wars” franchise, but “Darkest Hour,” an extraordinarily deft and moving depiction of the outset of Winston Churchill’s time…

WASHINGTON – Wisconsin’s Supreme Court soon can right a flagrant wrong stemming from events set in motion in 2014 at Milwaukee’s Marquette University by Cheryl Abbate. Although just a graduate student, she already had a precocious aptitude for academic nastiness….

As we approach the end of President Trump’s first year in office, the list of extraordinary things he has done – for both good and ill – is nothing short of remarkable. Trump inspires such deep emotions in his critics…

WASHINGTON – The recent excitement over an incredible story about the government trying to ban certain words reminded me of all the words and phrases I despise and wish were banned. For the sake of getting on with it, briefly:…

WASHINGTON – Preaching morality while practicing cupidity can be tricky, but various American governments have done it for years regarding smoking. This mental contortion now has a new chapter. Altria, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard and Philip Morris, the four largest American…

To listen to the Democrats, the American middle class will be lucky to survive the Republican tax bill. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, calls the bill “monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class,” and that’s one of…

President Trump raised eyebrows when he invited Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp to fly with him aboard Air Force One for a tax-reform rally in her home state of North Dakota on Sept. 6. For a vulnerable Democrat running for re-election…

SEATTLE – It is protected by Washington state’s lopsidedly Democratic political class, which knows who butters its bread. It has been provided bespoke law, tailored for its comfort. Nevertheless, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been so avaricious in…

WASHINGTON – In “First Things, Last Things” (1971), Eric Hoffer wrote, “The intellectual cannot operate at room temperature.” Hoffer, who died in 1983, meant that intellectuals in his day tended not to be temperate. In our day, this defect –…

WASHINGTON – A household appliance will be the next steppingstone on America’s path to restored greatness. The government is poised to punish many Americans, in the name of protecting a few of them, because, in the government’s opinion, too many…

WASHINGTON – The first time ended badly, so when, 156 years later, Alabamians were incited to again try secession, this time from the national consensus that America is a pretty nice place, they said: No. No, that is, to rubbish…

It’s a wonder that President Trump devotes so much time to discrediting the news media, when the news media do so much to discredit themselves. The media’s errors over the past week haven’t been marginal or coincidental, but involved blockbuster…

WASHINGTON – The first use of nuclear weapons occurred Aug. 6, 1945. The second occurred three days later. That there has not been a third is testimony to the skill and sobriety of 12 presidents and many other people, in…

WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans’ tax legislation is built on economic projections that are as confidently as they are cheerfully made, concerning the legislation’s shaping effect on the economy over the next 10 years. This claim to prescience must amaze alumni…

WASHINGTON – The conversation about a cake lasted less than a minute but will long reverberate in constitutional law. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear 60 minutes of speech about when, if at all, making a…