It’s the phrase “border security” that freezes my soul every time I hear it uttered, every time I see it in print — so simplistically obvious, the equivalent of keeping your door locked. Did you ever have your cellphone swiped? If you’re careless about this, you’ll pay the price. “This is a national emergency,” Donald Trump […]

Today is one of the 10 best days of the year to read all the “Ten Best” lists of the year. “The Ten Best Movies of the Year,” “The Ten Best Books of the Year,” “The Ten Best TV Shows of the Year,” “Top Ten Children’s Names of the Year,” “The Top Ten Design Trends.” […]

Long ago and far away — in 1987 and in New Hampshire, to be precise — a promising candidate for the White House was hounded out of the presidential campaign because he was seen in his townhouse with a 29-year-old woman. It was a political drama then, and it is a film drama now. Gary […]

The Second Continental Congress, having been convened for six months, had been engaged in the wrestle for or against independence, the vast majority of delegates being decidedly against such drastic action most of this time. Surely there should be a way of reconciling their differences with Great Britain instead. This was so, even after the […]

The news is filled with images of migrants massing at the U.S-Mexico border near the San Ysidro crossing in California. Why haven’t they been able to enter the United States? Because a physical barrier prevents them from doing so. It is just another example of a barrier — a fence, a wall, whatever — providing real border […]

Some years ago, I watched a herd of nine mares stampede across a pasture on a friend’s farm. It was an impressive spectacle, like leaning on the rail at a racetrack. Because I fed them regularly, I knew them well. As they thundered by, the two youngest animals at the rear kept looking backward and […]

On Dec. 16, 1944, the men of Lieutenant Lyle Bouck’s platoon had their all-night vigil interrupted by a pre-dawn fusillade of artillery rounds from a hundred German guns, their muzzle flashes punctuating the darkness like a volley of fireballs hurled from the pit of hell. Instead of telling his intelligence and reconnaissance platoon to withdraw […]