For most kids, Grandma and Grandpa’s house is their favorite place to visit. Filled with toys and endless affection, treats and hugs. For ordinary people, Thanksgiving is a particularly special time to spend with family.

That wasn’t my childhood. Don’t worry — this isn’t a sob story.

My grandparents were an intense breed of Irish ...Read more

Thanksgiving was never an important holiday for me. Gathering the family from near and far for a celebratory meal wasn’t unusual; our family was composed of Italians and a small sprinkling of Irish.

Growing up, we always gathered around different tables at different houses, broke out the biscotti and anisette and whatever random pasta dish ...Read more

The Founding Fathers had a lot to say about Thanksgiving. George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789. His successor, John Adams, recommended a day of fasting, humility and prayer.

But what about the Founding Mothers?

We’ve all heard of Abigail Adams, Martha Washington and Dolley Madison. Few, however, know historian, ...Read more

After 20 years and $2.3 trillion spent, after more than 100,000 American and Afghan lives lost, one would think our war in Afghanistan would be more of a reference point today. Yet, outside of a few jabs from conservatives regarding President Joe Biden's handling of the exit, the war was hardly brought up at all this election cycle — despite ...Read more

Before this year's presidential election slips into gloomy history, we should pause to slam our moldy, undemocratic vote-counting system called the Electoral College.

If Donald Trump had to win, it's good that he prevailed in both the archaic Electoral College and the national popular vote.

The popular vote should always settle who is elected...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump’s economic legacy may well depend on whether he prefers the comparative form of an adjective. Specifically, does he believe it is hard to make a living in the U.S. — or harder than it used to be?

It is not an insignificant distinction. The central conceit of economic populism, dominating both the left and the ...Read more

Thanksgiving is my favorite American holiday. Let me count some of the ways I love Thanksgiving:

Because it isn’t very commercialized.

Because it doesn’t leave out the lovelorn and the lonely.

Because it has an intrinsic honesty: It’s about being grateful.

Because it’s about as much extended family as most of us can take: just one ...Read more

Do you enjoy fruits and vegetables? Assuming the answer is yes, come next year who do you think will harvest the oranges, almonds, lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes and the other 300-plus crops grown in California?

Who will work in the state’s dairies, meat plants, and food processing factories, most located in the Central Valley?

Republican ...Read more

Talk about indoctrination in public schools.

Idaho’s resident Christian nationalist organization, the Idaho Family Policy Center, is circulating a petition to “call upon the Idaho State Legislature to pass legislation so that daily Bible readings — without instruction or comment, and with appropriate conscience protections — will once ...Read more

I’m a progressive Californian, a Black man, and I did not vote for Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris this year or Donald Trump. I voted for Claudia De La Cruz, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for president.

The decision was easy. With two exceptions over the last four decades of presidential elections, I have always voted ...Read more

On a February evening in 2020, a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide (CO2) ruptured in Mississippi. It sent a cloud of asphyxiating gas into the community of Satartia, causing 49 people to be hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms. First responders had a hard time rescuing people, because the internal combustion engines on ambulances couldn�...Read more

More than a decade ago, it seemed the tide might turn against pervasive campus sexual violence. In a 2011 letter, under President Obama, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights charged universities with taking effective steps to end sexual violence, a form of sex discrimination that is prohibited by Title IX.

For the next few ...Read more

Gov. Maura Healey could have saved Massachusetts $6,800 this summer had she not sent a team to the southern border in Texas to “educate” people of a shelter shortage here.

As the Herald reported, the trip was another bid to dial back the number of migrants arriving in the Bay State.

“We don’t have housing available right now, and we ...Read more

In George Orwell’s classic depiction of an authoritarian society, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” a key component of political control is the state’s erasure of history: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten … every date has been altered. … After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains.”

That ...Read more

Your internet access is dependent on the security and resiliency of garden-hose-sized underwater cables. More than 800,000 miles of these cables criss-cross the oceans and seas. When just one of these cables breaks, which occurs about every other day, you may not notice much of a change to your internet speed. When several break, which is ...Read more

Vietnam has positioned itself in recent years as an attractive destination for Big Tech companies looking to move away from China. But Hanoi’s policies regarding social media have increasingly been following Beijing’s lead.

The Southeast Asian nation is now ramping up already tight controls over online platforms with new rules that will ...Read more

Five days a week. That’s the new return-to-office policy at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and at Amazon.com Inc., the retail giant now run by his designated successor Andy Jassy. It’s also the RTO recommendation Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have announced for the U.S. federal government.

It’s a terrible way to manage talent. It seems ...Read more

The Iowa pollster being slammed by Team Trump is quitting. Too late, the damage is done.

Her dismal prognosticating on the eve of the election became a major story. Iowa was swinging over to VP Kamala Harris? A red state going blue? The timing was atrocious and arguably manipulative.

Pollster Ann Selzer got it wrong! She’s moving on to “...Read more

As the Ukraine war, launched by the imperialist invasion by Russian despot Vladimir Putin, passed its 1,000-day mark this month, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s troops are newly empowered by the Biden administration to use long-range ATACMS missiles to attack targets in Russia, which they did. And Moscow responded by launching its own new mid-...Read more

Most Americans, from both parties, say the government needs to increase the supply of affordable housing. For President-elect Donald Trump, that should offer a good opportunity to summon his instincts for development — and self-promotion — to get America building again. Call it the “Trump Building Boom.”

The problem is clear: For more ...Read more