Opinion

Political commentator and journalist Abdul-Hakim Shabazz was denied access to a recent news conference by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, which is troubling when no valid reason is given.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg received a great deal of criticism lately for taking paternity leave. It is a time of snarled port traffic, understocked grocery shelves and growing worry about supply chains. I think these critiques are in bad faith and unworthy of an intellectually confident political movement. But, that’s where we are now. Congress could spend serious effort to ease logistics problems in any number of ways; the private sector is already at work. Outside of complaints about Mr. Buttigieg, Congress has been silent on the matter. Let me make three points.

Somehow we learned that Caesar wrote “Gaul is divided into three parts.” So too the United States is divided by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) into three classes of counties.

Under pressure of successive self-imposed deadlines, with a befuddled country looking on, Democrats in Congress continue to wrestle with a supposedly transformative spending plan and the means to pay for it. On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced yet another version of what this might involve. The eventual outcome is still anybody’s guess.

Now we know.

So often these days I find myself wishing we could find a way to make our politics and our public life reflect who we Americans really are.

I never know what to order when I go into one of those trendy new soup and sandwich places. The list of uncommon offerings is endless. The people standing behind me have obviously downloaded a menu at home and given this some previous thought.

One of my favorite classes in middle school was geography. I enjoyed reading about countries with exotic names, learning about their histories, languages, exports, types of government and especially religions.

Some adults don’t like to see teens trick-or-treating on Halloween. I’m not one of them.

During and after the recession of 2007 through 2009, college enrollment grew rapidly. That was partly just millennial-generation demographics: there were 3.5 million more 18- through 24-year-olds in the U.S. in 2010 than a decade earlier (and about 750,000 more than there are now). But the percentage of young Americans attending college and graduate school also hit an all-time high in 2011.