Americans watch more NFL this season after several years of ratings decline. While couches and seats fill, fields go empty. For the first time in 30 years, high school sports witnessed a participation drop last year, with football’s loss of…

Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of between 50 and 100 troops from northern Syria and plans for the removal of 2,000 or so American military personnel from the country. Washington asks why the president pulls our forces. Many Americans outside…

Draining a swamp comes with inherent risks: infectious diseases, rat bites, and, most common of all, the propensity to go Ben Gunn rank among the worst fates. But swamp creatures face troubles all their own by imagining the bog a…

When Geraldo Rivera found neither a treasure chest nor skeletal remains in Al Capone’s vault, he did not dare tease an encore special promising to surface the Titanic or interview D. B. Cooper. Adam Schiff possesses none of Rivera’s humility….

Whenever Iran makes news, as it did last week in its alleged attack upon Saudi oil facilities, it tends to make bad news. Strangely, the worst news out of Iran — the Islamic Revolution that birthed all of that bad…

Democrats onstage in Houston aspire not so much to govern America as to punish it. Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke called racism not only “endemic” to America but “foundational.” He explained, “We can mark the creation of this country not at…

Laughs never come so hard as when some authority — a vice principal, a parent, a coach — sternly lectures, “That’s not funny!” This in part explains the rolling-on-the-floor hysterics induced by Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special, Sticks and Stones. The…

Red Line Blues, the first novel by Scott Seward Smith, arrives more than six years after its Obama-Romney election backdrop. If its setting seems passé in the wake of the seismic presidential election in between then and now, its theme strikes…

The Joe Rogan Experience works because the host exudes curiosity, the guests fascinate, the format (untethered to word counts or ad breaks) allows for an authentic conversation to develop, the tone remains uninhibited and the palate broad, and the views…

Quentin Tarantino made a movie so brilliant in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that critics and audiences love it despite missing the point. Like so many good films, it operates, and works, on many levels. When one uncovers all…