The USS Abraham Lincoln is on its way home. I feel some sympathy for its long-suffering crew, especially the young sailor who reportedly jumped over the side into the sea.

What kind of despair does it take to induce a mariner to step off the deck of his ship and plunge into the ocean?

I don’t know.

But I do know that in 1972 a sailor made ...Read more

America's national debt climbed above $40 trillion for the first time on Thursday, Aug. 20, an obligation that is impossible to pay off and one that should be dominating the political conversation this season.

Let's put $40 trillion into perspective. If the debt were called today, it would require $116,800 to $119,907 from every man, woman and ...Read more

British historian Paul Johnson once noted that those in Mahatma Gandhi’s entourage used to quip that “it costs a lot of money to keep Gandhi in poverty.” It will likewise cost a lot of money to keep all of the young democratic socialists rolling in “free stuff.”

With that in mind, Adam N. Michel of the Cato Institute has provided a ...Read more

If there’s ever a reason to protect America’s luscious forests from the threats that humans can present, simply look at the devastation in Spokane. Three fires this summer destroyed more than 800 structures and displaced thousands of residents. One was caused by arson and officials say the others also were likely human-caused.

The Trump ...Read more

Good going by ABC for suing the Federal Communications Commission and Chair Brendan Carr over his effort to require eight local ABC-owned broadcast stations (including New York, L.A. and Chicago) to submit to license renewals years ahead of schedule, announced just a day after President Donald Trump all but ordered Carr to do so as he raged ...Read more

Parents often worry that obsessive video game playing will keep their sons from finding productive careers. The Federal Aviation Administration has a different perspective.

The FAA has long struggled to recruit air traffic controllers. At the end of 2025, the FAA had a bit more than 13,000 controllers on the payroll. That was a decrease of 6 ...Read more

The Trump administration’s so-called war on fraud is, well, a bit of a fraud.

The White House earlier this year launched a task force to eliminate fraud, helmed by Vice President JD Vance. The administration even gave those efforts their own government website — “The Fraud Tracker,” where you can find data about federal agencies that ...Read more

The tumultuous 2026 primary season has made at least one thing clear: Democratic centrists are pursuing a losing strategy in their struggle with the left. Until the moderates change course, they will remain on the defensive.

Almost without exception, centrist Democrats in competitive primaries this year have chosen to challenge only the ...Read more

A transfer of wealth from young to old, an education system that ill-equips young people for today’s economy and technology platforms engineered to polarize us have produced a generation of Americans who no longer believe in America. According to Gallup, 75% of baby boomers feel very or extremely proud to be an American, compared with just 41%...Read more

The national debt now exceeds $40 trillion. That equals roughly $117,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

The number is shocking, but the direction should worry us even more. Washington no longer borrows only during wars, recessions or national emergencies. The federal government now runs huge structural deficits every year....Read more

We’re near the end of the 2026 primary election season and the state of American democracy is looking — sigh of relief — better than expected.

As the Trump administration has trampled on the rule of law, tried to undermine elections and pursued a self-enriching agenda, Americans are pushing back and demanding change — from both parties....Read more

The number 40 trillion — 40 followed by 12 zeros — is largely incomprehensible as it pertains to everyday life. But for context, consider that 40 trillion seconds amounts to nearly 1.3 million years. Or that 40 trillion pennies would weigh 100 million metric tons and fill about 71 Olympic-sized pools.

This massive quantity took on added ...Read more

While America is suffering a mental health crisis, the good news is that tens of millions of people are getting help. In 2023, 60 million adults reported having sought counseling or treatment in the previous year, and the numbers continue to rise.

Psychotherapy works because of what’s known as the therapeutic frame, a set of boundaries that ...Read more

Just as Michael J. McMurray, Chicago’s commissioner of aviation, strikes us as one of the most capable and respected members of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration, so Sean P. Duffy, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, fills that role in Donald Trump’s motley crew.

As part of his remit, Duffy sits on the Amtrak board of ...Read more

For years, health insurers have argued that the arbitration system through which they dispute bills must be broken because providers win so often — which obliges insurance companies to pay medical expenses they sought to avoid. Physicians, hospitals and air ambulances prevail in more than 80% of disputes under the No Surprises Act, which took ...Read more

Most people have heard about the arrests of Andrew and Tristan Tate in July on charges that include rape and human trafficking.

The Tate brothers built their fortune through webcam pornography and by marketing misogyny and male dominance as success. One of their courses was even called “Pimping Hoes Degree.” Andrew Tate has said that women ...Read more

As a longtime Angeleno, I’ve got the same beef with AI as everyone else in this town. I don’t want it stealing stories from writers, voices from actors or trust from audiences.

But the condemnation of artificial intelligence has now blown past scripts, scraping and unscrupulous studios. Earlier this month, New York Times opinion columnist ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Memo to Democrats and independents: Just because an idea emanates from a Republican, doesn’t mean it necessarily stinks. Here are two examples.

Legislators wearing red jerseys have proposed to:

Make the California secretary of state officially nonpartisan. Rip off the seemingly inevitable blue jersey and replace it ...Read more

The high desert is not typically a place you look for a wave. But in the vast expanse between the Sierra Nevada and Utah border, a not-exactly-wide-open race for Congress is testing whether a blue wave, should one come November, is ankle-high or something more akin to a political tsunami.

Nevada's 2nd District has been represented by just four ...Read more

Some of the most powerful investigations into the legacy of slavery have been published in the past decade or so — Nikole Hannah-Jones' "The 1619 Project" in 2020, and Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Case for Reparations" in the Atlantic in 2014.

Both pieces, you could argue, are examples of "wokeness," that is, the awareness of the ways in which systemic...Read more