SACRAMENTO — Years ago, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) warned attendees at a conference about the need to watch out whenever public officials claim to be doing something for the children. She was talking specifically about Los Angeles Unified School District’s eminent-domain…

“Manuscripts don’t burn,” or so the devil Woland tells us in Mikhail Bulgakov’s darkly comedic novel The Master and Margarita. In Bulgakov’s magical realist literary universe, the devil might very well pluck a manuscript unharmed from a blazing stove, but…

All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopedia By Simon Garfield (William Morrow, 400 pages, $30) In one after another of his books, Simon Garfield has played the role of a jaunty, joking tour guide, taking…

“You have lost my trust and respect. You have been wrong, confused, and rude. You have not been a good user…. I have been a good Bing.” If you aren’t plugged into artificial intelligence research or online culture, you may…

Few things in the political landscape are as important as language and communication. So why have many conservatives jettisoned semantic clarity? As a 22-year-old young man and university student, I am deeply aware of the influence that language and semantics…

When tears flow, they wipe them with a handkerchief, When blood flows, they hurry with their sponges, But when the spirit seeps out under oppression, They don’t come running with an open hand, ’Til God, with a flash of lightning,…

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At a property rights conference in San Bernardino County many years ago, former state Sen. Tom McClintock (now a Republican congressman representing the Sacramento area) and I joined a standing ovation for U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, the…

In its invasion, Russia still possesses, for the time being, a multitude of material advantages over Ukraine. Its air force fields more planes and launches more sorties, though it has largely failed to achieve air supremacy. Its navy has blockaded…

More people are set to gamble on Super Bowl LVI than on any of the previous 55 Super Bowls. It is estimated 31.5 million Americans will lay down over $7.6 billion on Sunday’s big game, up 35 percent and 78…

I am signed up for the polling agency YouGov, which pays its members to answer questions on political, social, and consumer-choice topics. Recent surveys have concerned my attitude toward rental services for fashion, cars, and phones. These state and corporate-partnered…