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Columns

Donald Trump: Energy in the executive

Whatever else you want to say about him, President Donald Trump has what Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 70 called "energy in the executive." Announcing a peace plan for Israel and Hamas, ordering the dispatch of federal troops to protect immigration enforcement personnel in "sanctuary" ...

Who will protect us from the protectors?

In the same week in which President Donald Trump announced that he was federalizing 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers and dispatching them to the streets of Portland, he quietly signed a Presidential National Security Memorandum that purports to federalize policing. The Memorandum, just like ...

Mississippi, not California, is the education future

A miracle defies the laws of nature. This is why "the Mississippi Miracle," the sobriquet for the extraordinary gains that students in the Gulf state have made in reading in recent years, is a misnomer. There's nothing miraculous about a state that adopts phonics and that sets high ...

Bibi tells the truth (again)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the UN General Assembly was partly performance, but mostly profound. The performance part included a QR code on his lapel which delegates were invited to zoom in with their camera phones and see atrocities committed by Hamas that are too ...

Trump is right: Tech visas are raw deal for US workers

The time has come to praise Donald Trump. Let's savor the moment. The president is right to challenge the tech worker visa known as H-1B. This is a temporary visa that lets American companies hire skilled foreign workers in "specialty occupations." The visa's fans offer a mirror image, with ...

The conflict entrepreneurs behind our broken politics

I have long become accustomed to what I call the "BTMF" reflex whenever a great, newsmaking calamity or outrage happens. That's short for "Blame the media first." As a long-tenured journalist, I try not to take it personally. Yet sometimes the complainers have a point, and we in the news ...