The awkward solution of an Electoral College was created as a way to prevent Congress from having the authority and as a way to get Southern states to agree.

Portland, with 77 percent white population is one of the nation’s whitest cities, yet it will be majority-minority on the new city council. The city remains among the most liberal in terms of social policy, but the mayor’s victory plus this shift on the council may signal a police-reform agenda that would not be radical.

Very few Lushootseed speakers survive, and the language is regarded as critically endangered. The next stage of decline is dormancy, a so-called “sleeping language” that has no proficient speakers but is still important to a particular ethnic community.

The American tradition is that former presidents, and presidential contenders, go to ground after their successor takes office. Barack Obama was photographed on a yacht in Tahiti. But don't expect that from Trump for a New York minute.

With the possibility of full closure now on the table, locals are looking at the possibility of using the recycled site for green-economy manufacturing.

Women candidates set new records this election, but are we any closer to political parity?

Control of the Senate is riding on these two races. Expect money to shower down on Georgia for the next two months; it will be sixty days of rainy nights.

Trump's tactics might be better suited to Uzbekistan or Uganda—except that they’re more brazen and desperate than the tricks dictators in such countries have to fix their elections.

In some ways, 2&U is a laboratory for cities of the future. It could show us how to activate the all-important ground floor after e-commerce and now the pandemic have dealt blows to downtown retail.

One observation: Women matter. In Washington state, women voted overwhelmingly for Biden -- 66 percent to 32 percent, while menfolk headed the opposite direction, splitting 48-46 percent in favor of Trump.

With Democrats increasingly dominant in the state, conflicts within the governing party are likely to be fought out on the primary and general elections.

You may think yourself rightminded when it comes to clumsy thought and slipshod reasoning, but reading him is to discover what’s slipshod and clumsy in your own thought. You don’t just learn about how “the enemy” thinks and acts, you discover how your own compromises and oversimplifications help him get away with it.

Overall, I read the election as overwhelmed voters ratifying the American system of checks and balances. Get rid of Trump, but keep the GOP Senate and the Supreme Court.

I’m probably going to badly embarrass myself by weighing in now, but hey, you only go through an election that feels this consequential once (I hope). So here goes.

I found myself cheering the NEJM authors for further pointing out that instead of turning to experts in the field of infectious diseases, public health and policy administration government leaders had relied on “…uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.”

One example of a benefit: Less commuting, since downtown offices are less needed. A related gain: less deification of density. Urbanism will spread from the hub to the satellite towns, redefining and spreading the attractions of humane density.

Abortion was legal for much of the nation’s early history. Under English common law, the cornerstone of American jurisprudence, abortions performed prior to “quickening” (the first perceptible fetal movement) were not criminal offenses. Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision of 1973, essentially restored English common law as adopted by our nation’s founders.

In Washington, the loss of Roe will probably have less impact than the hospital mergers that have placed a number of major Seattle and state medical centers under control of Catholic health-care organizations – in which, following church doctrine, abortions are not performed.

The Seattle Repertory Theater (as the name recalls) once deployed a repertory method. It commenced in 1963, right after the Seattle World's Fair, when the repertory idea was the hot idea for regional, non-commercial theater.

The roadblocks to successful prosecution this proposal establishes will discourage police from making arrests, amplifying a condition that already exists today, and discourage prosecutors from taking cases to court.

One friend in the Italian countryside represents the generation that feels like their formative years of socializing and dating are being stunted. He may put on smiling face but he is noticeably distraught.

In this spare, intense revival from the Opera am Rhein in Düssedorf, it fits our current national mood like an Iron Maiden.

An age-old axiom: Anybody who knows anything will divulge nothing, while those who know nothing are willing to say anything. Nonetheless, I persevere.

Doggerel inspired by a grave in Ireland whose tombstone reads "Tell Me the News", which, being a lifelong news junkie, I always thought I'd like mine to read too.

All philanthropic support is not equal. And the pandemic lockdown demonstrates different approaches.

In a a rationally governed world it could be done, thereby opening up the enormous range of coordinated actions available to policy makers ready to look at hard facts before making hard but firm choices.

There’s something bigger, more malevolent, going on here. Something demonic.

It induces candidates to build broad coalitions to win elections. They can’t win by just energizing their base. Instead, they must appeal to a wide coalition of voters to win second and third choices.

The situation calls for local politicians to walk (fight Covid's spread) and chew gum (salvage the local economy) at the same time.

Federal dollars for colleagues’ projects would vanish if they forgot Julia Butler Hansen’s birthday. She was around for a very long time. That was an era when the yardstick was whether the girls were as tough as the boys.