George F. Will

His crackling novel deserves to be news. But America is better than Wolfe's Atlanta.

Why liberals love trains.

This episode teaches two lessons. First, legislation that must be ambiguous and misleading, even to supporters, in order to be passed should not be passed. Second, no good can come of a law that makes government the arbiter of the truth of political speech.

Funding for grades K through 12 comes in large measure from property taxes, and the housing crash depressed property valuations. But budget problems confronting municipalities can, Duncan thinks, have benefits because "when you're flush, you keep doing the same things."

"A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism." —Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.A specter is haunting America, the specter of Europe. Which is just one reason why Barack Obama's first two years have been such a tonic for conservatism.

In 2010 we learned that many of us are Neanderthals.

The First Amendment vs. an Arizona law.

An appointed senator looks back, and ahead.

Connecting disparate dots is how Robert Weissenstein's interesting mind finds fascination in the quotidian. We are, he thinks, in an accelerating process of pervasive global restructuring.

The short, ugly career of Alan Grayson.

There is ethanol promoted by government, which need not turn a profit. There is algae research by ExxonMobil, which does need to. Which do you think is most apt to serve the nation's needs?

Gallant government will protect the weaker sex.

The cover of The American Scholar quarterly carries an impertinent assertion: "The Earth Doesn't Care if You Drive a Hybrid." The essay inside is titled "What the Earth Knows." What it knows, according to Robert B. Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, is this: What humans do to, and ostensibly for, the earth does not matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth.

Can trout be bored? Can dolphins or apes? Are they neurologically complex enough to experience boredom? What might boredom mean to such creatures? Humanity can boast that it is capable of boredom, but there may now be an unhealthy scarcity of that particular brain pain.

As Ronald Reagan prepared for his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in October 1980, some Reagan aides pondered how their candidate should respond if Carter unearthed some of the at-times-too-colorful things Reagan had said over the years. For example, when in 1974 Patty Hearst's kidnappers demanded the distribution of free canned goods, Reagan reportedly quipped that this would be a good time for an outbreak of botulism.

Carly Fiorina, 55, has been contending with chemotherapy and radiation treatments and reconstructive surgery because of breast cancer, so she is understandably undaunted by the relatively minor challenge of winning a U.S. Senate seat in this state that last elected a freshman Republican senator in 1982, that has not supported a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and that has not elected a right-to-life candidate in statewide voting since 1998.

For reasons related to normal rhythms of American politics and to Barack Obama's abnormal lurch to the left, his presidency probably has passed its apogee. If Obama has a second term, it probably will be, as most are, more difficult than the first, during which his party's brand has been badly damaged in just 17 months.

Our Demosthenes seems to regard the rule of strategic reticence as irrelevant to him. The rule: Do not speak unless you can improve the silence. He did not do that with his Oval Office speech.

The tax code is like daytime television--almost anything done to it would improve it. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) are striding onto the dark and bloody ground of tax policy, which their proposal would improve.

Mayor Villaraigosa's nightmare numbers.

The reddest state has the most endangered one.

The costs of fads and superstition.

Explain the putout that was scored 8–8.

But first, 'dollars for dishwashers.'

The making of modern immaturity.

The GOP looks away from Dixieland.

But all this is in the subjunctive mood.

The underemployment rate is 17.3 percent.

Whirl is king in today's Washington.

Inflation is not only a monetary matter.