Well, so much for last week’s experiment with a race-and-politics-free column about the entertainment industry; it landed with a thud so loud I checked my roof for Eric Clapton’s son (I did that joke years ago and it ...

A toast, ladies and gentlemen, to Mr. Shailendra Kumar Upadhyay of Nepal, who shuffled off this mortal coil on Monday afternoon at age 82. Mr. Upadhyay was at 18,700 feet above sea level when he turned in his lunch pail, ...

GSTAAD—A fin de saison feeling around here, but the restaurants are still full, the sons of the desert still moping around, building is going on nonstop, and the cows are down from the mountains making the village a ...

The first friend I made at Lawrenceville School was Reuben Batista, eldest son of the Cuban strongman. Being foreigners gave us something in common, the rest of the school being mostly WASPS with a smattering of Catholics. ...

“Free trade results in giving our money, our manufactures, and our markets to other nations,” warned the Republican Senator from Ohio and future President William McKinley in 1892. “Thank God I am not a ...

“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail,” said Secretary of State Henry Stimson of his 1929 decision to shut down “The Black Chamber” that decoded the secret messages of foreign ...

The Week’s Roomiest, Zoomiest, and June Gloomiest Headlines THE LONG CON Not since the wife in Gone Girl has someone made such vindictive use of their death. Jimbo Jackson was the principal of Fort Braden K–8 school ...

It is not often that the title of an article in the Guardian newspaper makes me laugh because of its absurdity, but I laughed when I read the following: People struggle to understand grief, but it ...

The Italians have voted to reduce their number of politicians by 30 percent. Bravo! Millions will be saved in salaries, pensions, and official allowances of privileged deputies and senators; and, most important, they will ...

The seven billion huddled residents of this shimmering, twinkling, spinning orb undoubtedly performed millions of kind acts and noble deeds over the past week. The hungry were fed, the naked were clothed, and numberless ...

Stanford University has published, to much-deserved derision, a kind of index of prohibited words, that is to say words that could possibly cause anyone, even animals, distress. Of course, if you treat people as eggshells, ...

Part II of my series about the changing face of my native city. Part I can be found here. When I was young, it was ridiculously easy for Westside homeowners to find a Mexican to do yard work or haul trash or feex ...

The Week’s Most Pedantic, Bacchantic, and Sycophantic Headlines ZULU DAWN OF THE DEAD Two months ago The Week That Perished featured the madcap tale of Lindani Myeni, a Zulu prince from the Kwazulu-Natal province in ...

The Week’s Most Jittery, Glittery, and Skittery Headlines SESAME STREET’S SLIPPERY SLOPE “The eyes are the window to the soul.” No two people agree on where that phrase originated. Some say the Bible, others say ...

Last week, it was Venezuela in America's gun sights. "While a peaceful solution is desirable, military action is possible," thundered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. "If that's what is required, that's what the United ...

Must we really respond to the "musket" argument again? Apparently so. It's all the rage among Democrats right now. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (Democrat) and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Democrat) both think it's quite ...

You think the 2012 Republican field is lackluster? Check out these party animals. The “party” in that last sentence is the Chinese Communist Party. The gents standing in the picture are the aptly named Standing ...

Let’s keep out of war in Syria. The BBC 5 o’clock news started with the most extraordinary and chilling words I have heard in fifty years of watching or listening to the BBC News. “Russia and America edge closer ...

GSTAAD—Except for the hovering of helicopters overhead carrying great slabs of rock or timber, the constant whirring of cranes and cement mixers, and the roar of trucks, the building site that Gstaad becomes the moment ...

This week, The New York Times reported on new laws in Maryland and Montana that restrict law enforcement's use of genealogy databases to catch serial killers. (Maryland I can understand, but Montana? Has someone kidnapped ...

Pat Buchanan may be the only self-described paleoconservative whose last six books have reached The New York Times Best Seller list. Pat did this despite the established conservative movement’s slanders and the Murdoch ...

DALLAS—Whoever took the photo of the Covington Catholic High School kid holding that painful smile during the face-down with the Omaha tribal elder at the Lincoln Memorial should receive the Pulitzer Prize and the ...

I own a pair of Sarah Palin shoes. Not the “do-me” pumps fetishized by her friends and foes alike. Mine are customized Keds with her face all over them. On the rare occasions I’m brave enough to wear them in public, ...

I hadn’t heard of John Edgar Wideman before reading his October 6 op-ed in The New York Times. Googling around, I see that he is the author of many books, both fiction (12 novels, six short-story collections) and ...