Opinion

It’s time for Australian legislators and jurists to end a juvenile tussle about citizenship and who can serve in government. Their future depends on it. There is almost daily hysteria in Australia over a formerly obscure clause in the constitution that bars dual nationals from sitting in the federal parliament. The question is which legislators are now disqualified because they …

American voters are obligated to pass judgment on President Donald Trump. Increasingly, American corporations may find that they, too, have little choice. After Trump failed to call out the racists responsible for the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, Merck & Co. chief executive officer Kenneth Frazier made an announcement: He was resigning, he said via Twitter, from Trump’s …

The most important thing to know about Steve Bannon, the departing White House “chief strategist,” is that he was an amateur. And just as Richard Neustadt tells us that the presidency is no place for amateurs, the same is true for White House senior staffers. The most important thing to know about Donald Trump’s first staff is that the actor …

“Whose streets? Our streets!” If you found it disturbing to hear white supremacists chanting these words as they marched last weekend through Charlottesville, Virginia, I’m about to make you feel worse. This blueprint for political rise comes directly from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” where the would-be dictator advised his followers that “the road can be cleared for the movement … …

The S&P 500 Index has recorded more than 150 new all-time highs since eclipsing its previous peak in late-March of 2013. In 2017 alone there have been 30 new record highs through the end of last week. To put this into perspective, there were only 13 new highs for the entire decade of the 2000s. When you combine a stock …

`The Federal Reserve has an opportunity to test a hypothesis critical to the health of the US economy: Can persistently loose monetary policy boost the pace of productivity growth? Sadly, for now, an adherence to a strict Phillips curve framework for the economy and fear of financial instability will prevent the Fed from venturing down this path. Chair Janet Yellen …

One by one, some of the most important people in corporate America lined up to criticize the president of the United States. Though many of them didn’t utter Donald Trump’s name, they didn’t need to. Everyone knew they were talking about Trump’s repugnant “both-sides-are-bad” response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend. “What we saw there was domestic …

Morally, the only proper reaction to last weekend’s events in Charlottesville, Virginia, is outrage. Legally, the analysis has to be more nuanced. To help prevent further violence while preserving freedom of speech, we need to distinguish three categories, all of which seem to have been in play in Charlottesville: terrorism, peaceful protest and provocative action aimed at producing street violence. …

Remember that Chinese pet food, laced with melamine, that caused kidney failure in the family European pooch? The horse meat passed off as beef burgers in Britain? Now tainted Dutch eggs are making diners uneasy. There’s something especially creepy about recurring food scandals, even the ones that don’t pose a huge threat to public health. The latest, involving millions of …

The exodus of chief executive officers from two of President Donald Trump’s advisory councils led him to disband the panels. That’s no great loss: The councils mostly served political rather than policy purposes. But for those who serve in the highest ranks of government, the issue is different, and quitting is not the answer. It’s hard to fault anyone for …