Carol and Robert Miles recently realized that they were spending nearly $800 a month on gasoline. For that money, they figured they could buy a second house. So they did.
The Mileses drive lots of miles. They live in De…

In Spain, Pamplona has its annual running of the bulls. Sweetwater, Tex., has its Rattlesnake Roundup. And Washington has the annual farce of the physicians’ Medicare fee cuts.
Not familiar with that last one? It plays out when an increase in…

Sixty years ago last week, the Soviet Union sealed all road, rail and river links into Berlin. Millions of German citizens under the protection of American, British and French forces faced starvation.
It has the ring of ancient history today.…

NO NUDE
IS GOOD NUDE

Lest you think that the Iraq war, the economy and high gas prices are the only subjects on the political agenda, consider the plank that Robert Hurt, a delegate to the Texas Republican Party’s platform committee,…

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Photos courtesy of Truman Presidential Library, Berlin Airlift Historical Society…

Christopher Hitchens, the tough minded journalist and social critic, undergoes torture waterboarding for Vanity Fair and talks and writes about the experience.

Read some commentary about his effort here.

Perusing al-Jazeera’s Arabic-language website the other day, I saw an article from mid-June about the presidential contest between John McCain and Barack Obama, specifically over statements they had made about their views on terrorism.

I thought it might be interesting to translate…

The beat goes on with local violent crime: A 66-year-old Belleville woman was stabbed to death Friday. A 49-year-old man was gunned down at midnight Saturday near Sherman Park on the city’s north side. A U.S. Park Service ranger shot and killed…

Anyone who has moved out of a home knows the embarrassment of cleaning out the basement and the attic, hauling years of accumulated junk into the light of day, wondering why that sofa or lamp ever seemed like a good…

Below (lightly edited) is a wonderfully witty and engaging “translation” of the Declaration of Independence — into 20th century American parlance.

It first appeared in Baltimore Evening Sun in 1921.

It was written by H.L. Mencken, brilliant essayist, editorialist, satirist, grump, skeptic,…

Barack Obama sparked considerable controversy in recent weeks when he announced that he would not commit to public financing for the general election campaign, despite his earlier pledge to do so. This makes Obama’s the first completely privately-financed general election campaign since the…

The financial geniuses who run Cerberus Capital Management and its Chrysler LLC unit have utterly failed thousands of St. Louis families who depend on Chrysler’s Fenton plants for their livelihood.

They have failed the city of Fenton and the state of Missouri, which three…

With the click of a mouse, you can track the swollen Mississippi River in real time as it plods downstream, overwhelming levees and elbowing beyond its banks.
But you can’t find a complete list of levees built along the upper half…