Author: nick

A dandelion grows in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Photo: David Yearsley. As I suggested last week, Jeremy Eichler can’t visit all memorials or write about them in his book, The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance. Let’s leave Eichler’s tour of monuments, musical and architectural, and head out on a different excursion—a bike ride through Berlin. Our itinerary begins in Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy held his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in May of 1962 in front of the municipal hall with its clock tower. When I first moved to…

On or off campus, students stress over housing, especially in high-cost states. Source link

Voting where you live in the city, or your place in the countryside? Can New Yorkers with two homes really choose where to cast their ballot?  A group called MoveIndigo wants New York Democratic voters who have second homes to vote where their second homes are located if those properties are in swing districts. “New York State law is clear,” the group claims. “Citizens with dual residences have the right to choose where they want to vote. They do not have to vote where they maintain their primary residence.” Is that true?  The New York State Board of Elections publishes…

James Wilson’s vision of a Constitution rooted in the people anticipated Lincoln, Reconstruction, and modern constitutional democracy. Source link

On April 7, 1966, Time magazine generated headlines by asking “Is God Dead?” Four decades later, the “Four Horsemen of Atheism,”  Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett famously heralded religion’s unraveling. A mere eight years after their declaration, Pew Research Center reported that the percentage of those identifying as agnostic/atheist was projected to increase substantially in the United States and Europe.In 2021, Christian church membership dipped below 50% in the United States, and about three in ten Americans now identify as “religiously unaffiliated,” up from 16% in 2007 to 28% today. In her article The World’s Departure…

A new survey of students at regional public universities by the think tank Third Way offers some surprising insights. Source link

Republican frustrations with Trump are becoming more public and more direct – and so is Trump’s frustration with Senate Republicans. Source link

An Iranian missile hits the Israeli oil refineries near Haifa on March 19, 2026. Photo: Hanay, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0 In the past year, Israel and the US have twice used their advanced technology and massive firepower to launch surprise attacks on Iran and Lebanon, killing thousands of civilians and destroying ‘enemy’ weapons and boats, as well as mosques, churches, hospitals, museums, highways and bridges. Notwithstanding Trump’s pompous claims, Iran has defeated the US and Israel. Although Israel has continually had a laser-sharp focus on its goals, the US never had a clear view of why it was fighting.…

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on two major immigration cases Thursday, handing the administration important victories in its fight to tighten the nation’s borders. Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox In a pair of 6–3 rulings split along ideological lines, the court said migrants in Mexico have not “arrived in the United States” for purposes of federal asylum law until they cross the border, and that courts generally cannot review the government’s decisions to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The decisions reversed lower-court rulings that had blocked the policies. Previously, immigrants…

Here’s a sentence no one expected to read: The government of Cuba is embracing the importance of markets and the business sector. Earlier this month, the state-run newspaper Granma announced 176 economic reforms that would legalize private banking, private business ownership, private real estate ownership, and the privatization of state-owned companies. It is an admission that Fidel Castro’s communist experiments of the 1960s have failed. “Cuba must not repeat the mistakes of the past, and must not depend, in economic matters, on any single product or any single country. Our country must seek an economic development path where we must…