As a general rule, important decisions—say, for instance, deciding whether or not to invade a Middle Eastern nation—turnout better when they are well-informed. Poorly informed choices tend to end in disaster.

Consider our invasion of Iraq—a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and is by no means over, even though our troops have mostly left. That war killed 4,500 American soldiers, injured at least 32,000 at a dollar cost measured in trillions. If you measure defending our national security in blood and money, this war was more damaging to our national security than the Sept. 11 attacks themselves.

Read more

(Jackie Robinson, the subject of the movie 42, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949). I am not a person who romanticizes Jim Crow. Separate but equal was never equal, and activists were right to upend that system of apartheid. But everything comes at a price and the price Jackie Robinson paid, at […]

Read more

The defeat of the Senate’s gun bill last week reflects the strength of the NRA and other pro-gun membership organizations. But it also reflects the potency of a less examined political force: the gun industry. Senators who scuttled the most ambitious gun regulation bill in decades weren’t just representing their constituents. They were also protecting […]

Read more

(CNN’s John King reported last week that arrests had been made when none had. AP and Fox News followed suit.) By Friday night, when we all felt as though we were craning our necks around police cordons to get a better view of the action through our motley screens, it seemed as though the television […]

Read more

Connecticut enacted a round of gun-control laws last week that are being called the strictest in the country. The legislation, signed by Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy, bans more than 100 kinds of firearm, including the semi-automatic “military-style” rifle used to slaughter 20 innocent schoolchildren in Newtown last year, as well as magazine cartridges holding more […]

Read more