German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently suggested the banning in Germany of the full-face veil. The idea that a Western country such as Germany might have a right to make such laws, and to do so with motives other than racism, has certainly not been universally accepted. For example, a few days...

By now you probably have read the stories about how Trump called a meeting with the press, only to give them a dressing down. If you don’t care all that much—well, the press certainly does.

Just as an example, read this from David Remnick of the New Yorker:

The fantasy of the...

There’s long been speculation about what President Obama will be doing after January 20, 2017.

Much of it has centered around ideas connected with the international scene, particularly the UN and the post of Secretary-General. But by custom, that position has never been filled by anyone who is a citizen of a...

Now that Donald Trump has become the president-elect, the reactions of Democrats seem to be sorting out into two camps: the optimists and the pessimists. The optimists are saying some version of “wait and see how it goes.” The pessimists are saying that the political apocalypse is coming soon or is...

Last Friday, in the civil suit regarding the Sabrina Erdely story about an alleged gang rape at UVA—the attention-getting piece that portrayed “Jackie” as victim extraordinaire—the periodical Rolling Stone and journalist Sabrina Erdely

When Barack Obama took office in 2008, one of the most difficult things for conservatives was the fact that he soon had a compliant and Democrat-controlled Congress to do his bidding. With the defection of Arlen Specter in April of 2009 and...

In last night’s debate, Donald Trump stated that if he were president Hillary Clinton would be in jail. If you look at the entire transcript, that was the last (and most extreme) statement of a much lengthier exchange that went like this:

TRUMP: When I speak, I go out and speak, the...

Last Friday night a black man named Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by police officer Betty Shelby in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The case has already received a lot of attention as one of a line of recent incidents in which an unarmed black person was killed by police, and Tulsa Police Chief...

Hillary Clinton’s wobble Sunday at the 9/11 ceremony has been the talk of the news cycle, and once her camp put out the word that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia there’s been a great deal of speculation about the likelihood of that.

Here’s a summary of the medical announcement Clinton’s...

For a long time I’ve conceptualized Trump voters as falling into two camps: the enthusiastic and the reluctant. No doubt there are some who fall in between, too, but I think that mainly there are those two categories.

The first group consists of people who supported Trump in the primaries, either as...

Donald Trump made a speech recently in an appeal to black voters.

I’ve noticed many pundits on both left and right treating this as a very unusual thing for a Republican to do (see this, for example). And here’s how one commenter on my blog described it:

Trump makes the best speech of the...

Alzheimer’s disease is a scourge that’s so common that most of us know at least one person who has had it, and often considerably more than one. It’s a tragedy and an ordeal both for the afflicted and for those who love them and care for them. I probably don’t have...

A great many Germans seem angry with Angela Merkel and would like her out of office:

Merkel’s premiership is hanging by a thread today as thousands gathered to call for her resignation while a key political ally dramatically withdrew his support over immigration policy.

More than 5,000 protested in Berlin and thousands more...

Hillary Clinton has never adequately explained her decision to use an alternate and insecure email system. Her initial excuse (wanting to use one device) turned out to be untrue, and people have speculated ever since on the real reasons. But no one—not even Hillary herself—has ever offered a possible reason that...

Even though his official campaign for the presidency is over, Ted Cruz isn’t taking a vacation. Last Tuesday Cruz began conducting a hearing:

…investigating…“Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts To Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”…

This hearing will likely focus on which figures within the federal government worked to squelch any research...

To be quite blunt about it, a great many people in Britain have just given a big middle finger to leaders who have ignored their concerns about national identity and autonomy, and their right to make decisions within their own country about the nature of that country. These principles used to...

It’s not that Trump has never criticized Hillary Clinton before. But a speech Trump gave today focused on those criticisms. I’ve been expecting that to happen, because realistically speaking it’s his best and perhaps only chance—to ramp up the already-existent dislike...