The young pitcher's on his way to the majors, but the old catcher who will never get there knows the tricks to pull. He tells him to bean the mascot, in the great baseball movie "Bull Durham." He does.

The batter says, "This guys crazy," and the catcher agrees, adding, "I wouldn't dig in there if I was you. The next one might be at your head." ...Read more

Mark Zuckerberg can do with his social media giant Meta as he pleases and he aims to please the prevailing views of the federal government. The return of Donald Trump to the White House coincides with the naming of key Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White to its board and abruptly deciding to move away from using fact-checking partners to combat ...Read more

Based on the questioning of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, the justices sound inclined to uphold a law requiring the Chinese owner of TikTok to either sell the widely popular app or be banned from this country. It seems the correct reading of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

As we’ve said before,...Read more

I meant to write a column about key global flashpoints to watch out for in 2025.

But I soon realized there are two main things you need to observe closely in the new year to assess whether this chaotic world will grow more stable: what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin each want from the world (hint: it seems to be the same thing), and where that...Read more

In 2016, the American Bar Association couldn't say enough good things about Merrick Garland, then the chief judge of the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, when it sent the Senate a report giving him its highest rating. So at Garland's confirmation hearing, a bar ...Read more

Los Angeles is a topographical wonderland. Mountains loom in the distance. Hillsides and canyons are the refuge of hikers and dog-walkers. Beaches and bluffs above the coastline beckon. Into this wilderness we have threaded our neighborhoods and streets, not to mention freeways, making it a mix of the wild and the urban. We are the only megacity...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 7 press conference in Mar-a-Lago got me thinking about his upcoming inaugural speech, on Jan. 20. What should we watch for?

To begin, consider Trump’s first inaugural address, delivered on Jan. 20, 2017. This is the speech that’s sometimes characterized as the “American carnage” address, during ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's campaign excursions into foreign policy were few and far between. He promised to build a stronger military and keep the country out of war. He said he would bring peace to Gaza and end the war in Ukraine on "day one," never offering details.

Last week, Trump waded boldly into global affairs — but he barely ...Read more

Donald Trump, felon, will remain exactly that. A felon. He also will remain a free man, ready to take the oath of office Jan. 20 to be the duly elected 47th president of the United States, able to do the will of the people without concern for his personal legal travails.

That was the upshot of New York Justice Juan Merchan’s deft handling, ...Read more

Education reform has long been a contentious issue in American politics, and the debate over school choice is especially divisive. Ironically, President-elect Donald Trump’s support of efforts to provide families with educational options presents Democrats with a critical first opportunity to embrace bipartisanship and pivot toward the ...Read more

During most of the 100 years of his life, and even in these first two weeks of his death, former President Jimmy Carter has been gifting us with the enduring example of how he chose to live his life.

We have heard eulogists – the famous, the friends, the family – reflect upon the examples most Americans sort of knew but mostly forgot. Now, ...Read more

That wagging tail and those hopeful eyes that keep glancing toward the door are telling you something: January is Walk Your Dog Month. Even if wet, dreary, chilly weather has you tempted to stay indoors, your canine companion is counting on you to get out there and give them a chance to stretch their legs, see the sights and sniff the hydrants. ...Read more

Last month, The New York Times published a disturbing story about the expiration of health protections for migrant children in custody. The protections, which were the result of a legal settlement in 2022, implemented measures to safeguard the well-being of children held in certain areas along the southern border.

The impending end of ...Read more

To say that President-elect Donald Trump has a lot of plans for his second term would be a gross understatement. He has vowed to implement the largest deportation operation in American history, secure the U.S.-Mexico border and negotiate a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia.

Yet for Trump, all of these items may be minor when compared ...Read more

As a student, like many of us, I liked to read Henry David Thoreau. Many of his ringing one-liners thrilled me and got copied down in my commonplace book, but there was one sentence I hardly registered: “Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.” In my early...Read more

California is growing again, news that comes as a relief, vindication or vexation, depending on where you stand in regard to the Golden State. Or, perhaps more aptly, where you reside.

The state, which had its modern birth in a fever of money-lust and speculation, gained population in every assay going back to those Gold Rush days. Growth — ...Read more

A vitriolic debate has engulfed what’s typically an arcane corner of immigration policy: the H-1B visa for college-educated foreigners. Proponents say the visa is an essential but insufficient pipeline of global talent for hard-to-fill jobs — jobs that have long been part of the lifeblood of the American economy. Critics say visa holders are...Read more

The middlemen that comprise a growing share of America’s convoluted health care system find themselves in a bind. The public is angry about the inflated costs and opaque dealings that govern their access to medical care. Lawmakers, despite recent setbacks, are eager to respond. Intermediaries have become an obvious target for blame and reform....Read more

The United States faces a nationwide crisis in which our young people are reading at alarmingly low rates, with just 1 in 3 fourth graders meeting proficiency standards. So why are some on the right focused on standardized testing, not for students but for teachers?

Make no mistake, literacy is the big problem in public education. But it’s ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — My niece and I walked to the end of the Venice Pier on Tuesday to watch brilliant, orange flames creeping up the Santa Monica Mountains in Pacific Palisades. Thunderclouds of smoke loomed over the ocean as ferocious winds drove them offshore and whipped sand at our faces.

On Thursday, I drove into the Palisades with my friend ...Read more