Well, that was a nothingbaguette. For French President Emmanuel Macron, his second visit to Beirut since the devastating blasts of August 4 yielded one memorable photo-op, some posturing before the international media, a few airy bromides about the need for political reform and an unspecified threat of sanctions against those who oppose it. For the Lebanese, it produced a loose, ...

It’s hard to believe that America’s legislators, whatever their political leanings, would willingly allow millions of children to go hungry. Yet that is what’s happening during the Covid-19 crisis — and unless Congress acts quickly, the problem’s about to get worse. In one of the world’s wealthiest nations, food insecurity should not be an issue. Yet it is. Even in ...

The “right of the people peaceably to assemble,” as the US constitution’s first amendment calls it, is one of the pillars of liberty. That’s why all liberal democracies guarantee and protect it in some form. But is this right absolute? Could there be, in well-defined cases, a liberal case for abridging it? This timeless question has just become newly urgent. ...