People aren’t doing it for the free doughnuts. But they might do it for America. — The great patriotic holiday of July 4 came and went, and so did the brief hullabaloo in the press over our failure to hit Joe Biden’s deadline for getting at least one COVID shot into the arms of 70% of U.S. adults. The president made a speech promising to go…

If right-wing politicians will attack a pregnant 10-year-old rape victim, nothing is sacred and none of us are safe — At first, it sounded like the sort of abstract “what if” scenario you might come up with to catch a Republican congressman off-guard in a debate. “Should a 10-year-old girl be forced to bear the child of her rapist?” But to our enduring horror, the story is real. …

Is it too much to hope the work of the 1/6 congressional panel will lead to a Trump wing at the federal penitentiary? — The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capital has begun the public phase of its hearings and the naysayers — at least all those who don’t work for Fox News or occupy a Republican seat in Congress — are eating a little crow. The storytelling is…

It turns out the central conservative legal principle of the past 50 years is a load of hogwash — All politicians lie, the old chestnut tells us. But along with that bit of certainty came the understanding that it was most often a gentler sort of lie, fudging unhelpful facts, overpromises made in the heat of a close vote, an over-parsing of words when caught in the wrong company…

A Florida judge strikes down the mask mandate for travelers and gives us a peek at just how partisan the courts have become — Hey, good news. You are now free to get on an airplane without wearing a mask, and you can go back to starting your vacation trying to get over the cold you caught from the sneezy guy in the next row just like in the old days. Wait a minute…

The sun came up as bright as you might wish for an Easter morning. Dazzling yellow set in a sky of Easter egg blue. But the air was frigid, feeling like spring had not done much of a job of getting itself sprung, even though here we were in the…

A walk in the desert, and a clue to what might lie ahead for us — I parked the car at the side of the highway and walked a mile into the desert, in the direction of a big stand of palm trees. The walking was not easy. The sand was deep and loose, making walking a little like trying to run on a beach. With…

It’s time to stand up to the political lies — I don’t know what gets taught to kids in school these days and I don’t think most politicians do either, as much as they like to roar about it on the cable TV channels. However, I remember two simple lessons from my early days in the classroom. Both were formative. …

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to build a totalitarian empire. Instead, he’s ignited a global consensus against that sort of thing. — Living in frigid Minnesota teaches a person to hope for spring. But we also know that when the warm weather arrives it’s often accompanied by floods and the occasional violent storm. One of the best lines in poetry comes from T.S. Elliott’s The Wasteland, where he warns those anticipating spring…