Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg marked the occasion with a remarkably contrite post to his followers: “For those I hurt this year, I ask forgiveness and I will try to be better. For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask forgiveness and I …

Leaving aside the bloviating protests of President Donald Trump, there are two ways to understand Russia’s influence campaign against the 2016 election. The first is obvious. The Russians tried to elect Trump. You don’t need access to top-secret US government documents to reach this conclusion. It happened in real time. Russians hacked the emails of leading Democrats and distributed them …

The secession of a region without constitutional authority is a big deal, as referendums in Catalonia and Kurdistan have shown in the last week. To get a sense of the possible consequences, think of the US Civil War, which started precisely because Southern states insisted they could secede while Northern states pointed out that such a right was nowhere in …