Most law schools require applicants to write an essay about why they want to be a lawyer and most applicants scribble away about justice and the rule of law elevating human society from the swamps of savagery. If their sentiments are sufficiently lofty, the applicants are accepted into law school and the professors begin to […]

I was in Montreal last weekend; it was my first visit in many years. I found a city still half-buried in ice from last month’s storm. Everywhere, streets and sidewalks carried glaciers four to six inches thick. Some homeowners were attacking with sledgehammers and chisels, cutting the ice into blocks and stacking them against the […]

I’m not happy about this. I had intended to speak this week, as always, about the environment or freedom of information or equality in education. But I can’t. Like everyone else, my thoughts this week have been pre-empted and pre-occupied by conjecture about what the president may or may not have done with an intern, […]

Every January for the past several years, I have sought out an editorial forum to speak about climate change. This tradition is a reactionary one; each year I find myself responding to a meteorological crisis linked to global warming. This year’s crisis was an ice storm, which locked much of the Northeast, including my house, […]