Some of my friends never speed; more of them never get caught -- my wife, for instance. I don't often speed, but whenever I do, it seems, I get caught. But now, this year, last month, I had a life-changing experience in traffic court: From now on I will never...

Three significant blocs seem to be jostling one another in Tahrir Square and in Egypt itself: The educated middle or upper middle class, now sizable in Egypt (and the Middle East), is most prominent at this point, answering the call of its young activists and bloggers, many of...

Among the thousands of signs held up at Tahrir, in many of the world's languages, not a few address Barack Obama, usually in English: "Come to Tahrir Square" they say to him, come see for yourself what we are doing. Twittering and blogging, shouting and marching, many of the young...

Barack Obama is smart, eloquent and well-informed; he has an even, sometimes too even, temperament; he can inspire a crowd and he can impress individuals. What he has not had--what he has not found until now--is a weekly or daily pulpit from which to be heard and understood by...

Minnesotans are a patient lot, we all know that: never too frantic in traffic jams, unexcited by life's ups and downs, 'steady as she goes' in so many of the dramas that would make a New Yorker squirm or scream. So the reaction in the North Country to the endless...

Even those of us who don't follow cricket shouldn't miss the continuing coverage of the attack on the Sri Lankan team visiting Lahore, Pakistan, for an international match. The attack may well prove to be one of the pivotal moves in the complex chessgame of South Asian politics.

Despite the...