Ever since the miniseries “Roots” was shown on ABC in 1977, Americans have demonstrated a keen interest in finding out more about where they came from and the names and circumstances of their ancestors. Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is fulfilling that longing in the latest installment of the PBS series “Finding Your […]

Not for a long time has the world seemed so removed from the angelic proclamation of 2,000 years ago: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). Millions have died in countless wars over the past 100 years. People continue to die today as the result of […]

Since nearly everyone else seems to be employing “Star Wars” metaphors these days, permit me to use some of my own. To conservatives, the Republican congressional majority was supposed to be the good side of “The Force,” as opposed to what they regard as the Democratic “dark side.” And yet, unlike the film, “dark side” […]

Each of the Republican presidential candidates brings something good to the race for the GOP nomination and some things not so good. In the fifth and final GOP debate of the year, the candidates on the main stage, and even a few on the “undercard,” presented ideas and positions that many Republican voters would consider […]

If representatives of the nearly 200 nations gathered in Paris for the UN Conference on Climate Change had instead formed a coalition to fight a real threat — Islamic terrorism — they might have accomplished something useful. Instead, what they came up with is a document that even Secretary of State John Kerry, in a […]

LONDON — Set aside for a moment the violent incidents associated with people claiming to act under the authority of their Islamic faith and consider instead what passes for normalcy. Some in Britain would like to elevate to the level of wide-scale acceptance Sharia law, an Islamic legal system predicated on the religious tenets of […]

LONDON — Wisdom can often be found in unexpected places. During debate in the House of Commons on whether Britain should join the U.S. and Russia in bombing ISIS targets in Syria, Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary of the liberal Labour Party, delivered a speech that approached Winston Churchill in its vision: “And we […]

JERUSALEM — More than a decade after my 19th trip to Israel and the Middle East, this 20th visit shows how some things have changed, but the important ones remain the same. What one notices first is the large amount of new construction, which suggests a certain Israeli permanency against religious opposition, hatred and threats […]