Think about this. Because of Putin’s war against Ukraine, millions of Ukrainian men, women, and children are enduring the harshest conditions imaginable: nightly bombing; an absence of light, heat and water. Ukraine’s health system cannot keep up with the sick and injured. Schools have closed in much of the country. Despite help from European and Western allies, life in Ukraine...

Sorry, fans. I’m on assignment. Hope to return next Tuesday. Here’s what I like about politicians. Every once in a while, we get heroes—people who stand up for what’s right and good and best not just for the people back home, but the entire country. Margret Chase Smith, the Republican Senator from Maine, was such a hero when she stood...

With the approach of Christmas, last Tuesday’s commentary was looking for a way back from all the hate-filled turmoil of 2022. I asked, what one essential quality have Americans depended on to help heal the nation’s pain? Speaking before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky answered it for me. “Ladies and gentlemen — ladies and...

Amid all the chaos and divisiveness in Washington comes a political story of hope. Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old activist from Orlando, Florida, is the US representative-elect from his home state. And, as his website makes clear, he’s focused on one thing, “Change Can’t Wait.” “Mr. Frost,” The New York Times reports, “who is of Lebanese, Puerto Rican and Haitian descent...

Attending a Padres/Dodgers game in San Diego, I’m sitting next to a die-hard Padres fan. Despite my lifelong Dodger fever, we shared laughs, baseball stories and favorite teams: he loved the Yankees; I loved the Red Sox. What makes baseball so compelling is that while both sides want to win, they play on the same field, follow the same rules,...

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” In the depths of the Revolutionary War, George Washington’s troops struggled with disease, hunger, and defeat. What Washington needed was a...

“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” —Richard III, Act I, sc. 1 In March 1954, Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson spoke to a crowd of supporters about the poison that had infected much of the American public by a demagogic United States Senator. “We are witnessing the bitter harvest from the...

In a national address to the country, Jimmy Carter described how he “invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society — business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. I got a lot of personal advice: “I...

How does this end? That’s the existential question for all of us as the world sits on the brink of a war too terrible to imagine. Under Russia’s relentless, unprovoked assault, Ukraine has suffered missile attacks, the bombing of a maternity hospital, women and children killed. As a result, more than 2.8 million refugees, and counting, have fled the country....

It’s hard to ignore what’s happening in Ukraine. What’s more frightening: what would happen if Donald Trump were still president? “This is genius,” Trump said, recently. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent… I said, ‘How smart is that?’ “And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace...