“I’m a big Lord of the Rings guy,” JD Vance once told a podcaster. The running mate of former and perhaps future president Donald Trump went on to explain that “a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien.”

It’s always a good idea to re-read the classics, and JRR Tolkien’s trilogy is certainly among them. One mark...Read more

It’s no coincidence that anti-Israel student groups at Massachusetts colleges and across the country called for a “Week of Rage” starting on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas as progressive lawmakers demanded a cease-fire.

The protesters who swarmed Storrow Drive, the “ragers” who reportedly vandalized the John ...Read more

There’s only a few weeks remaining before the 2024 presidential election comes to a close — that is, pending election certification, recounts, challenges and lawsuits. Ed Kilgore, political columnist for New York magazine since 2015, estimates that only 4 percent to 7% of the electorate is genuinely undecided.

However, there might be a ...Read more

In the span of two or so years, OpenAI, Nvidia and a handful of other companies essential to the development of artificial intelligence have become economic behemoths. Their valuations and stock prices have soared. Their products have become essential to Fortune 500 companies. Their business plans are the focus of the national security industry....Read more

Stepmothers don't get enough credit.

Parenting someone else's offspring can be a really tough job. As a stepmother myself, I understand the challenges that often accompany being part of a blended family, and it's admirable that Vice President Kamala Harris manages to have great relationships with both her stepchildren, who call her "Momala."

...Read more

In the year since the attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, much has changed.

Israel launched a large-scale military operation on Gaza, the geographic base of Hamas. The lives of millions of Palestinians have been thrown into destitution, in addition to the tens of thousands killed. Hamas, which governs Gaza, has been ...Read more

Seattle's star socialist is at it again. This time, she's making news with some uncomfortable truth-telling about her own aims that's bound to make many Seattleites squirm.

Former Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant was out in Michigan over the weekend, stumping for the Green Party presidential campaign of Jill Stein.

Democrats have long ...Read more

Political centrism has a bad name.

In fact, it has a lot of bad names. Centrists have been denigrated as squishy, weak in the knees, guilty of being sellouts — and worse, unpatriotic.

However, the idea of centrism has been getting a second look recently. Americans are feeling like they are imprisoned for life in the politics of extremism and...Read more

“Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life.” — from the 2004 film I, Robot

More money is always good, but it’s clear now that wages were never the most critical issue leading to the now-suspended three-day strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association. The ILA�...Read more

As the Nov. 5 election swiftly approaches, the nation’s razor-thin presidential race hangs on one truth. It’s all about the base.

That mantra applies to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. There’s a wrinkle, however, for the Democrats.

Trump has locked up his GOP base. The challenge for Harris is that she must...Read more

It used to be common to see Let’s Make a Deal contestants leave the TV game show smiling after winning $100 for every coin they could pull out of their purse or pocket. But as America moves ever closer to becoming a cashless society, it’s just as likely to see contestants who couldn’t scrape up a dime.

About 41% of Americans no longer use...Read more

Donald Trump's fascination with genetics, especially his own "good genes" of the white European sort, as well as the "bad genes" of the you-know-which types, has always been creepy. I won't compare him to Hitler; I leave that to historians and JD Vance.

Here's Vance in 2016, before Trump's election: Writing to a former Yale Law classmate, Vance...Read more

With North Carolina still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton landing in Florida, it is natural to ask: What is the best way to help the victims of these storms, and how can society best protect itself from such damage in the future? As an economist, I realize that I come at these questions with a bit of a ...Read more

Should so-called ghost guns — assembled at home from kits in as little as 20 minutes — be counted as guns for purposes of federal law?

If you have an ounce of common sense, the answer is obviously yes. The relevant law defines a firearm as “any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by ...Read more

As we race to Election Day, one polling question will gain enormous importance in our understanding of the race — who are the actual voters? Using likely-voter screens, pollsters are now trying to figure out who will vote and who will sit this one out. In most polls, there is usually a small difference in the preference between the total ...Read more

The Supreme Court is back at work this week, and among the more important arguments the justices are set to hear is a lawsuit filed by the government of Mexico against American gun manufacturers.

A data leak from the Mexican military indicated that more than 90% of the firearms found at crime scenes in Mexico between 2018 and 2022 originated ...Read more

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters desperately wants the Bible — well, a bible — in state classrooms.

As the Oklahoman newspaper reported last week, Walters’ play here is actually a good bit greasier than a straightforward Christian nationalist effort to impose his own religion in the state’s 43,000 classrooms. ...Read more

We are constantly reminded that we are experiencing a climate crisis, but as a climate scientist, I can tell you that’s not what the science has shown us so far. Other than modest warming, there has been little change in any kind of severe weather that can be attributed to global greenhouse gas emissions.

You don’t have to take my word for ...Read more

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice cried after falling down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

In nearly every arena of our lives we might observe the same, from our changing climate and increasingly high-stakes global conflicts, to space travel, energy conservation and the accelerating use of ...Read more

In the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, U.S. politicians aren’t just bad-mouthing vaccines — they’re pushing through laws that undermine them. If the trend continues, we risk losing the layer of protection we enjoy from preventable diseases like the measles. And we risk losing more lives to seasonal illnesses like the flu and COVID.

A new...Read more