The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) pledged early this year that it was a new day in Washington, D.C. The transit agency pledged that the metro system would put safety and customer service first. D.C. commuters were largely skeptical that much would change besides rhetoric. Now WMATA finds itself in court, suing for the right to fire a mechanic involved in a January 2015 incident where a woman died after a train car filled with smoke. Read more
Strange things are afoot at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency housed within the Department of the Interior tasked with managing the nation's vast swaths of publicly held land. Read more
Contemporary campus gospel tells us that “all white people are racist." It's more or less the collective motto of a growing subset of race-focused consulting groups, propped up by popular progressive social science. Read more
So which is it? Hillary Clinton, on the stump, telling voters she cares about the little guy, or Hillary Clinton at an intimate gathering that charges $50,000 per plate? As a subhed in Wednesday’s Washington Post put it, "High-dollar fundraisers contrast with promise to help middle class." Read more
Are you enjoying the new Trump pivot? Like President Obama's pivot to the economy—coming soon to a theater near you since the spring of 2009—Donald Trump has been just about to pivot to the general election since the evening he wrapped up the nomination in Indiana. And yet, there's always a shiny object catching Trump's eye: Some Republican officeholder for him to insult or conspiracy theory to promote. Read more
A new revelation about former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson’s platform is, unfortunately, part of a continuing series, after he inexplicably came out against religious liberty and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld expressed dubious sentiments about the Second Amendment. Read more
Sir Antony Jay has died at age 86. Jay is best known as the co-writer, along with Jonathan Lynn, of the beloved television shows Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. To be honest, I knew next to nothing about Jay's life prior to his death, and to remedy that I recommend the Telegraph's fine obituary. Read more
Did you know this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death? Theater-rats have been told this a hundred times by now, but it bears reconsidering. In the course of four centuries, audiences have remained entranced by his work—the same plots, characters, and dialogue—unchanged, ever since. Read more
"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" was President Barack Obama's signature catchphrase he used to sell the Affordable Care Act to the American people. Now Obamacare's flagship website, healthcare.gov, no longer even addresses the issue. Read more
Recently, there's been renewed interest in reviving the “public option." Loosely, the public option is a policy proposal to create a giant government-run health insurer that would compete with private insurers. The rationale behind it is that a publicly run insurance company would be able to operate on lower overhead and provide health coverage significantly cheaper than private insurers. Read more
The best in books and arts from around the web, including: James V. Schall on David Walsh, pleading guilty at The Hague, Roger Scruton talks, and more. Read more
Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson recently ruffled professorial feathers with an impassioned anti-academic screed. His call for "destructive" reforms in higher education smacks of Freudian slippage. (Good ideas, according to the ruling tech paradigm, are "disruptive"—their "destructive" effects only implied.) Read more
Three GOP members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation are being accused of hypocrisy for advocating a federal disaster declaration in their home state. But there's nothing to the charge when considering how they've approached other relief efforts in the past. Read more
A new poll of likely voters in Utah shows Republican Donald Trump with a 15-point lead over his next closest competitor, Democrat Hillary Clinton. But the GOP nominee has only a plurality of support in a field that includes third party and independent candidates, and he remains very unpopular in the traditionally Republican state. Read more
A majority of the non-governmental meetings Hillary Clinton made while Secretary of State were with Clinton Foundation donors, according to an Associated Press report—the first to assess the proportion of Clinton's pay-for-play. Read more
President Barack Obama casually pressured the Republican-controlled Congress to address the medium- and long-term financial needs of flood-ravaged Louisiana as they arise Tuesday, as GOP members of the state’s congressional delegation stood behind him. Read more
The State Department refused to say whether it sent Iran $1.3 billion in January, claiming that they were obligated to withhold information about the financial transaction due to confidentiality. Read more
