Acentury ago, bird feathers were all the rage in fashion. Hats and other adornments used feathers of all sorts. In London, snowy egret feathers brought twice the price, by weight, of gold. Hunters nearly wiped out this bird to meet the millinery demand.

For close to two decades, U.S. presidents have sent American troops into combat without requesting authorization from Congress. As it conducts a review of U.S. military operations around the world, the Biden administration should push to restore the legislative branch’s proper role in deciding when and where the country goes to war.

Was Mike Pence a hero in the siege of the Capitol that has been replayed during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial?

In 2021, the pandemic-riddled Age of Online Shopping, with an Amazon delivery truck creeping down every street, lane and avenue in America, why do we need independent bookstores?

Apocalyptic warnings about climate change — such as the U.S. Geological Survey-Cornell-University of Arizona report in 2014 that the American Southwest faced a significant risk of a 35-year “megadrought” — grow more plausible and terrifying each year as new global temperature records are set and massive wildfires come to seem normal.

The lines have been drawn. Tech leaders no longer can sit on the sidelines, pretending they have no leadership role to play on the tech issue of our times: privacy and the consequences of nonstop exploitation of users for financial gain.

Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi fled the repression of his country to come to America. But even becoming a U.S. resident didn’t keep him safe. Not when the Saudi government, disregarding borders, law and human life, kidnapped and killed Khashoggi in an Istanbul consulate.

With former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial getting underway in the Senate on Tuesday, the nation’s attention is, once again, drawn to a man who craves it like a drug.

The new director of the nation’s top public health institute is looking at a tough row to hoe.

President Joe Biden’s early efforts on immigration have focused on quickly mending the damage done by his predecessor. Quite right. President Donald Trump was especially active, and especially foolish, on immigration, so there’s plenty to undo. But Biden is also looking farther ahead, and he’s proposed a comprehensive immigration reform that’s meant to resolve the issue for the foreseeable future. This part of his thinking is harder to endorse.

Most Americans, in fact nearly all Americans, get around using vehicles that use gasoline. And nearly all of our goods are delivered in trucks that use diesel. If there’s no fuel, those vehicles don’t magically start running on water or banana peels or old gym socks or any other substance, natural or man-made.

The House of Representatives voted last week to remove Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, a controversial and inflammatory Republican freshman, from her committee assignments. The vote was largely along party lines, although a handful of Republicans joined the Democratic majority. It’s an extreme measure, advocates of the move admit — but Taylor Greene, they insist, is an extreme case.

Adeep breath, a long pause and a lot more information and consideration are needed before anyone settles firmly on a way forward from the GameStop buying/​selling spree that upended Wall Street and its usual power brokers.