The first thing to say about the attempted massacre of congressional Republicans on a baseball field in suburban Virginia is that the motivations of the shooter were unusual. By which I mean that, based on what we know, James Hodgkinson had surprisingly normal political beliefs. He hated Donald…

I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas.

Now I…

Decades from now, the most enduring and defining mark of this Republican legislature may well be charter schools.

In 2011, Republicans came to power intent on lifting the 100-school cap that had existed since the mid-1990s. This school year, 168 charters operated in the state, educating more than…

SEOUL, South Korea – Some stories have to be experienced to fully grasp – the Korea crisis is one of them. I arrived in Seoul on the evening of May 28. As I was dressing for breakfast the next morning, I was jarred by a news alert ringing on my phone: North Korea had just…

When a gunman opened fire on a congressional baseball practice Wednesday, everyone in Washington looked for a positive message. There had to be a point to something so awful. The consensus was for Coming Together.

“For all the noise and all the fury, we are one family,” Speaker Paul…

Since the beginning of this year, there has been no net new jobs created in North Carolina.

In fact, using the latest data from the monthly survey of employers, there were about 2,200 fewer filled jobs in North Carolina in May than there were in December. In an era of intense politicization,…

If the U.S. imperium in all its might did not exist, if the Washington, D.C., of Donald Trump and James Comey were just the Sicilian-style backwater that it currently resembles, then no one looking at recent events would doubt that the entire Middle East is on the verge of its own version of a…

I’m looking at things differently these days since I am now somewhat retired. I say “somewhat,” because although I do not have a regular job, I am still doing things to keep myself busy, to occupy my mind and some of my time.

Some people dream of being retired someday and being…

HALCOTTSVILLE, N.Y. — On a recent weekend at the farmers market here, Fred Margulies sat under a “Vote Where It Counts” sign and beckoned second-home owners to re-register in this area upstate instead of wherever their main residences were — New York City, most likely.

To…

Over the last four years, Republican legislators, fueled by veto-proof majorities in both houses, have refashioned the state’s tax code, voting laws and its policies on education, the environment and social issues.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina’s legislative…