Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, recently floated the idea of offering people a 50-year mortgage instead of the more conventional 30-year financing option. It sounds attractive at first because stretching out repaying of a mortgage would lower the borrower’s monthly payment, but this wouldn’t fix the homeownership ...Read more

The most extended government shutdown in U.S. history has revived a familiar argument: The Senate’s filibuster is to blame for congressional paralysis.

It’s a compelling narrative with a convenient villain, but it misses the point. The filibuster isn’t the source of the Senate’s dysfunction. It’s a key tool that prevents the chamber ...Read more

The Virginia State Bar is “an agency of the Supreme Court of Virginia” with an explicit mission: "(1) to protect the public, (2) to regulate the legal profession of Virginia, (3) to advance access to legal services, and (4) to assist in improving the legal profession and the judicial system.”

Why then has it engaged in activities ...Read more

Every November, many of us gather around the table to pass mounds of mashed potatoes and catch up on health, house projects and happy news.

If we’re lucky, the young people will put down their devices. And if we’re extra lucky, Drunk Uncle won’t bring up politics. But with the recent government shutdown—and the party divide stronger ...Read more

For something so admired, so synonymous with merit, the concept of intelligence is remarkably poorly understood. Our society operates on the assumption that people with greater intelligence deserve access to better schools and better jobs. Many people believe that animals with higher intelligence deserve to be treated more humanely, or at least ...Read more

Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of attempting to abolish the filibuster when they held power. The truth is that the filibuster is merely a Senate procedure to shut off debate that has existed since 1917. The abolition of the filibuster is a bad idea that will destroy the Senate’s nature and make the government less responsive than ...Read more

If you’re a woman of a certain age, your social media feed is likely filled with advice on what hormones you should take. The promises made by menopause influencers about hormone therapy are expansive: easing hot flashes and night sweats for starters, but also promoting better brain and heart health, improving muscle mass and bone strength, ...Read more

At a White House event on Nov. 6 announcing price cuts for those blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz made an astonishing claim.

Because the price cuts would vastly improve access to prescription drugs, Oz said, by next year's midterm elections in November, "Americans will lose 135 billion pounds."

As ...Read more

The September morning that immigration agents grabbed Mercedes' husband was like a tragic prophecy fulfilled.

The El Salvador native narrowly escaped when three coworkers were nabbed this summer during a raid at a car wash in Orange County. La migra stalked his dreams for weeks after. On the day they finally got him, Mercedes said her husband ...Read more

Math scores in the U.S. have been so bad for so long that teachers could be forgiven for trying anything to improve them. Unfortunately, many of the strategies they’re using could be making things worse.

It’s a crisis decades in the making. In the early 20th century, education reformers including John Dewey and William Heard Kilpatrick ...Read more

Artificial intelligence is upon us, and just as other historical breakthrough technologies have proved, it is not a matter of how it will accommodate us but how we must accommodate it. Education, finance, law, transportation and energy are all sectors that are being dramatically transformed by AI, and medicine will be no exception. What will the...Read more

In the early 1980s, men and women in the prime of their lives began arriving at Walter Reed Medical Center, wrecked by a disease for which we had no name, no cause and no hope. As an infectious disease doctor there, I saw patient after patient bedridden and dying by the time they reached my care.

Those early stages of the AIDS epidemic were ...Read more

It’s the catchy new theme in Democratic circles. The memo is out: Drop the term “affordability” whenever you can to bludgeon President Donald Trump and Republican political candidates.

The idea is that GOP policies make life “unaffordable” for too many Americans. It’s an effort by progressives to own the “bread-and-butter” ...Read more

If killing men in boats at sea were truly legal, we wouldn’t need a secret memo to say so.

According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel quietly assured the Defense Department last week that U.S. service members cannot be prosecuted for the more than 20 “boat strikes” that have killed at least 80 ...Read more

Ten years ago, red-light cameras seemed to be everywhere, silent witnesses that tattled on drivers who blew through intersections when they should have stopped. There’s significant evidence that cameras reduce dangerous collisions where they are installed — and there’s no doubt the cameras, which can generate dozens of tickets a day, are ...Read more

The most insulting thing about the success of Breaking Rust, an artificial intelligence "artist" that topped Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales Chart this week, is the titles of the hits.

"Walk My Way."

"Living on Borrowed Time."

The EP — which is also on the charts — is called "Resilient," as if Breaking Rust spent years playing for ...Read more

As the White House toys with the no-joke prospect of actually invading Venezuela out of (understandable) ire at the government of (reprehensible) strongman Nicolas Maduro, a damning new Human Rights Watch report says that 252 Venezuelans, many of them political refugees from the socialist dictator, that the Trump administration recently deported...Read more

The term tipping point provides a useful way of thinking about that theoretical juncture along any path when the possible becomes the inevitable.

We often use the term in connection with climate change: The tipping point is the moment when the processes that contribute to global warming take on an irreversible life of their own. For example, ...Read more

President Donald Trump cannot accept defeat.

His psychologist niece explains it in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”

He showed it to the world on Jan. 6 by trying to persuade his vice president to overturn the election he had lost.

The same character flaw explains why he told ...Read more