Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House has more women, persons of color and LGBT members than any House in history — and fewer white males.

A couple of weeks ago I shared with readers a list of famous North Carolinians published in the 2019 “The World Almanac and Book of Facts.”

Here are a couple of easy immigration questions — answerable with a simple “yes” or “no” — we might ask any American of any political stripe: Does everyone in the world have a right to live in the U.S.? Do the American people have a right, through their elected representatives, to decide who…

Since the Knights of Columbus recently became a political issue, I’ve seen a constant refrain on social media that goes something along the lines of: “What do you mean, the pancake breakfast guys?” The point being: Could you be picking on nicer guys? But the Knights’ goodness goes far beyond…

The average public-school district in the United States enrolls about 3,700 students, according to a recent Governing magazine analysis. In North Carolina, the average school district enrolls more than 12,500 students. Only six other states in the nation exceed North Carolina in this regard …

If there is a more anti-Trump organ in the American establishment than The Washington Post, it does not readily come to mind.

While I have been traveling up and down North Carolina’s roads in search of local eateries, UNC Law School professor Gene Nichol has been traveling the same roads looking for something else.

In reference to efforts to teach black children, the president of the St. Petersburg, Fla., chapter of the NAACP, Maria Scruggs, said: “The (school) district has shown they just can’t do it. ... Now it’s time for the community to step in.” That’s a recognition that politicians and the educat…

On the third day of the new year, the Indianapolis Convention Center transformed into a place of worship. Seventeen thousand people took over the space in the name of Jesus, gathering for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) biannual SEEK event, drawing in young people who …

There has always been a robust political debate between advocates of free trade and advocates of manipulating the terms of trade to protect special interests. But the partisan affiliations of these two factions have fluctuated over time.

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” goes the old Christmas carol. “’Tis the season to be jolly.” Yet if there were a couplet less befitting the mood of this capital city, I am unaware of it.

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the arrival of “The World Almanac and Book of Facts.”

Much is made about observed differences between sexes and among races. The nation’s academic and legal elite try to sell us on the notion that men and women and people of all races should be proportionally represented in socio-economic characteristics. They make statements such as “Though Af…

“Your relentless hopefulness and positivity are no good here,” a millennial colleague of mine tweeted a few days before Christmas. It was her reaction to my response to another tweet of hers — as a potential government shutdown loomed and in the wake of the news of Secretary of Defense Jim M…

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there,” wrote President Donald Trump, as he ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Syria, stunning the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

I remember one Christmas more than all the others.

I know that environmental activists don’t want to hear this, but a core component of their preferred strategy for combatting global warming — substantially raising the price of fossil fuels through higher taxes — is not going to happen.

In the early 1930s, when Benito Mussolini was one of the world’s most admired political figures, Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed in his first inaugural address that there might have to be a “temporary departure” from “the normal balance of executive and legislative authority” so that he could …

What is a good book I can give a friend?

While the term “whataboutism” may be relatively new — coined within the last few decades, and newly prominent in the age of Donald Trump — the logical fallacy it denotes is as ancient as politics itself.

Kim Jong Un, angered by the newest U.S. sanctions, is warning that North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization could be imperiled and we could be headed for “exchanges of fire.”

Among the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s responsibilities are approval and regulation of pharmaceutical drugs. In short, its responsibility is to ensure the safety and effectiveness of drugs. In the performance of this task, FDA officials can make two types of errors — statistically kno…

I never met David Earl Miller. I didn’t even know he existed until the week he was set to die. Dec. 6 was his execution date at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn. Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the governor refused his lawyer’s final attempts to gain a reprieve.

How appropriate would it be for a major publicly held American company to hire a person with a history of having publicly made the following statements and many others like them? (In the interest of brevity, I shall list only three.) "The world could get by just fine with zero black people."…

George H.W. Bush was America’s closer.

“The real mystery after half a century,” Wyndham Robertson says, “is why life at the top of large American corporations still seems so overwhelmingly male.”

“It was June 1, 2006. I will never forget that date.” That was the day Angela Jozwicki had an abortion. She had grown up with “a lot of screaming” around her, and was using drugs by the time she was 14. In 2006, she was 22 and found herself pregnant. “I knew in my heart that a baby would sto…

In the January 1953 edition of the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction, a fan of the genre from Texas, Marilyn Venable, made her debut as an author. “Time Enough at Last,” Venable’s story of a bookish man who survives a nuclear holocaust, made such an impression that Twilight Zone creator…

How should we respond to the urban-rural divide? The question has legions of politicians, scholars, journalists and businesses scrambling for answers.

In Katowice, Poland, all the signers of the 2015 Paris climate accord are gathered to assess how the world’s nations are meeting their goals to cut carbon emissions.

“There should be an historic plaque in Chapel Hill honoring George Bush.”

A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter (http://tinyurl.com/ybsejy3f). Twenty-five percent of millennials who k…

“We waited six-and-a-half years to have children, and within seven months we became a family of four.” That has been the real-life experience of Malka Groden and her husband, Mendel; they gained an “instant family,” much like Mark Walberg and Rose Byrne in the movie “Instant Family” currentl…

People who follow politics, even casually, learn not to expect high moral standards from politicians. But there are some outrages that show a new low, even for politicians.

Mass migration “lit the flame” of the right-wing populism that is burning up the Old Continent, she said. Europe must “get a handle on it.”

People who follow politics, even casually, learn not to expect high moral standards from politicians. But there are some outrages that show a new low, even for politicians.

What do you think of the proposition that no black youngsters should be saved from educational rot until all can be saved? Black people cannot afford to accept such a proposition. Actions by the education establishment, black and white liberal politicians, and some civil rights organizations…

Wayne and Sean were the answers to a girl named Brittany’s prayers. Twenty-five years ago, as the 3-year-old granddaughter of a Philadelphian named Sharonell Fulton, Brittany watched children playing in the playground across from her grandmother’s house. She longed for the same companionship.