After months of somewhat desultory media coverage, Republicans have swept to control of the U.S. Congress with record numbers in both the Senate and the House. The GOP also won multiple state governorships. This “wave” election, a rout of the Democrats, is a classic backlash against the incumbent party, which has utterly failed to provide leadership to the nation. Yet the sky is still above, the earth below and as far as we know, the world is still turning on its axis. For all that partisans ...

I often ask myself: “Is America becoming a Third World country?” I’ve traveled all over the world and seen the ins and outs of developed and undeveloped nations, observing economic and political structures that work and many that don’t. And what I too often see in the Third World is that fair and equal treatment under the law often goes amiss. And it’s what’s lying beneath the surface in American politics — the nefarious deals made between corporations and the politicians that are supposed to k...

It’s been a busy month on the privacy front. For starters, word got out on August 5 that Russian hackers stole 1.2 billion usernames and passwords across several kinds of websites. Then, Facebook got into hot water — again — when it decided to force its risky Messenger app on unwilling users. Meanwhile, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that users of wearable fitness-tracking devices are unprotected by any privacy law, putting them at serious risk. And the European Union is poised to count...