Big Brother is watching you more closely than ever — and soon, perhaps, with drones. The pilotless aircraft that the U.S. government has used to spy on (and kill) insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere were approved by the Federal Aviation Administration last week for local law enforcement. Federal officials already had that permission...

Much is made of the fact that the late President Yasir Arafat controlled billions in funds that were used to support the Palestinian struggle for statehood and freedom. And since it also involved politics, more than a few people asserted there was corruption, asking, how could one man be in charge of so much money? When George Washington led the Am...

I wish every American could spend an hour in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. My last visit was on May 11, and like every trip, it was a profound experience. While the entire cemetery is filled with heroes, Section 60 carries urgent relevance because so many warriors from America's post-9/11 conflicts rest there. With each visit to the ha...

In the end, it won't be about who raises the most money. It won't be about who ate a dog or kept one on the roof of his car. It won't be about whether Barack Obama will protect the middle class against Mitt Romney's predatory capitalism. And it won't be about whether Mitt Romney will create jobs by eradicating Obama's "European socialism.&quo...

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's...

We looked at some hobbies yesterday. Here's another. Philography is the collecting of autographs. But you need to be careful. There are a lot of fakes. And then there is the curse of autopen, which duplicates a signatory's arm and hand movements. Donald Rumsfeld used one to "sign" condolence letters to families of dead Iraq War soldiers. ...

Editor's Note: Steve Chapman is on vacation. The following column was originally published in February 2008. "Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live, I am coming.'" Were Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. alive today, he might ascribe that line not to death but to nuclear terrorism. Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have had...

Moderates, we all hear, are an endangered species. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is the latest to be eliminated. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, announced her retirement in February. Bob Kerrey, a war hero and centrist Democrat who once represented Nebraska in the Senate, is running behind in a comeback bid. The tea party, by contrast, is flexing its mu...