While President Joe Biden is off doing Civil War reenactments, American families are left trying to balance household budgets that are being smashed by soaring prices. Inflation topped 7% in 2021, the largest surge in consumer costs since 1982.

That didn't last long.

Grave may have been the mistakes of Donald Rumsfeld, but George W. Bush's first defense secretary did have a gift for memorable phrases.

For the third straight day last week, the Chicago Teachers Union canceled classes, choosing to return to virtual learning and citing dangers from the omicron variant as their excuse.

The new movie "Don't Look Up," about a collision between a planet-killing comet and a frivolous America, is something of a critical failure - its score on RottenTomatoes.com is currently only 55% fresh - but a clear cultural success.

Hypocrisy and lies from politicians are so rampant in Washington that hardly anyone pays them much attention anymore.

It was unthinkable that Americans would storm the Capitol a year ago Thursday with the intention of doing harm to members of Congress and overturning a lawful election. Yet it happened.

The scariest story I read over the holidays had nothing to do with winter wildfires, the COVID-flu combo or the threat of Russia invading Ukraine.

Prices have been increasing at the fastest rate in decades, but we haven't been having a debate about inflation.

The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell on five of six charges of recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sexual encounters with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is not and should not be the end of the story.

It always seems as if the tragedies of Black Americans — instead of our triumphs — remain center stage in the media.

The pundits promised that 2021 would mark "a return to normal."

Peace on Earth and goodwill to men this time of year seems increasingly absent in diverse places.

When Joe Biden took over as president, millions of Americans were relieved to finally have a leader who could be counted on to consistently shepherd the federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in a coherent and fact-driven way.

If you spend even a small amount of time scanning social media or watching cable news, the world still seems like a pretty grim place.

Most leading immunologists predict COVID-19 will someday become an endemic, a persistent but manageable threat on par with seasonal flu, conceivably by the end of 2022.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is a political hero today not just because he's standing in the way of his party's reckless and overreaching spending bill, although that certainly is an admirable service to the country, but also because he stood up for the people of his state.

President Biden has attempted to tamp down the frustration many feel over his inability to crush the pandemic, as he promised he would do when campaigning for the office he now holds.

America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, but the actions of many of the troops who served can continue to uplift a fractious nation.

The Democrats should have listened to Joe Manchin.

During a debate with George H.W. Bush in New Hampshire in 1980, the moderator asked that Ronald Reagan's microphone be "turned off for the moment."

People who think that Donald Trump's influence on the Republican Party has been mostly malign are always looking for signs that it is fading.

Is it a good idea for Joe Biden to run for re-election in 2024? And, if he runs again and wins, would it be good for the United States to have a president who is 86 — the age Biden would be at the end of a second term?