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“When extreme meets the mainstream,”

While the similarities are telling, the differences are huge and must be emphasized.

Germany, the epicenter of European fascism, was an economic and political wreck after catastrophic losses in World War I,

There seems to be some confusion on the part of Mr. Paul Punturieri (letter to the editor, Dec. 24), when he referred to "Marxist leftists" and "fascist rightists." He seems to associate conservatives with fascism and progressives with Marxism. He is only half right, because progressivism is just a relabeling of Marxism, but conservatism is diametrically opposed to both.

Folks who have taken the time to actually read the letters from conservatives should have learned that conservatives favor small, less-intrusive government and individual rights for all the people, as our Constitution allows. In spite of progressives (actually "Fabian progressives," if you care to look it up) continue to try to label conservatives and Tea Party types as fascists. There is no truth to that, but what is new about that?

Seems to me that the elections next year will determine how the next century of history will play out for the world. Sliding deeper into the trap of government of gi'me more and take away our rights will lead to more lawless violence, war and revolutions. Only by force of arms will a Marxist or fascist government be able to hold power in this country because there are still many who will resist in kind to that kind of attempted control. That will be bad for everyone not only in America but world wide.

The party is in an existential crisis, and this sort of mindless obstruction, practiced on Capitol Hill for much of the past seven years, is partly to blame. Republican lawmakers, fearing pressure and primary challenges from extreme conservatives, refused to engage in anything that might be perceived as cooperating with Obama — and so the legislature ground to a halt. The failure to produce, or to do much to address the nation’s economic and security woes, caused more disgust with Washington. This, in turn, allowed the rise of a populist demagogue.

The Labour Party is currently debating how to define anti-Semitism. Whatever definition it ultimately chooses, it probably won’t be the one favored by many Jews: An anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary. In Jewish hands, this quip means, “Of course we can be annoying, but let’s not get carried away.”

People read what they believe in the newspapers rather than believe what they read,” said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the director of research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University

Even if news outlets rarely change one’s political identity, they are influential when cueing audiences on what positions to take regarding new issues, especially if these don’t cleave along party lines.

Under Dacre, Mail print circulation did grow until 2003, hitting around 2.5 million copies daily—after which it has kept falling, along with circulation in the rest of the industry. It’s at roughly 1.3 million a day now. (By point of reference, the Guardian is down to 140,000.)

Robert S. Mueller III’s report is a gift to the nation, which now knows what was already a reasonable surmise: that its chief executive’s unlovely admiration for a repulsive foreign regime, Vladimir Putin’s, is more a dereliction of taste and judgment than evidence that he is under that regime’s sway.

The report is an even larger gift to the nation because it might help stabilize the Democratic Party

What Mueller’s report makes possible is something like a normal presidential election in 2020.

Far from resembling the sometimes dim but dutiful set depicted by Orwell, today’s political elite are strangers to collective interest or public responsibility

Their conduct serves to undermine both the establishment of which they are part and the country they run.

The failure of our governing elite is technical and political, for sure. But it is also moral. They have short-changed the public for so long that they don’t know any different.

As I type this, Dominic is now voting for the deal he resigned to oppose, having negotiated that deal in the first place. He spent most of the week reckoning we should go back to the EU over the backstop, I mean … Dominic? DOMINIC? It’s now not so much that that ship has sailed, more that it has sailed, hit an iceberg, sunk, and formed the basis for a myriad books and dramas, culminating in the biggest-grossing movie of all time. WHICH BIT OF THIS JOURNEY DID YOU MISS? You were Brexit secretary. You were literally on deck with Michel Barnier while the band was playing.

farmers, agricultural scientists and industry officials say a new threat has been ruining harvests, upending lives and adding to the surge of families migrating to the United States: climate change.

Gradually rising temperatures, more extreme weather events and increasingly unpredictable patterns — like rain not falling when it should, or pouring when it shouldn’t — have disrupted growing cycles and promoted the relentless spread of pests.

Central America is among the regions most vulnerable to climate change, scientists say. And because agriculture employs much of the labor force — about 28 percent in Honduras alone, according to the World Bank — the livelihoods of millions of people are at stake.

“The Beneficiary” describes the making and spending of “a moderately sized American fortune” that lasted from one Gilded Age to another. It is often very funny, with some moments paced like a drawing room comedy.

Yet the duke inherited something more (or other) than money, and what comes to dominate his daughter’s narrative is her sense of wealth’s “misfortune.”

money is always being made and somewhere another such “‘place’ is being born,” in the Bay Area or China or Mumbai. “Maybe it’s fueled by a fortune reaped in private equity or online shopping or social media,” but wherever it is and by whomever it’s made that money will hire the day’s most fashionable architects, it will buy yachts and throw big parties, for “the signifiers of arrival are remarkably unchanged.”

To have an authoritarian personality as your president is to live a different kind of life. As Andrew Sullivan writes, the dictator “begins to permeate your psyche and soul; he dominates every news cycle and issues pronouncements—each one shocking and destabilizing—round the clock. He delights in constantly provoking and surprising you, so that his monstrous ego can be perennially fed.”

There was now something to fight for and to believe in.

I remember the night of the election. As the night progressed, gallows humor was replaced by a genuine sense of fear and panic. I left the election party I had gone to

Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has tangled with President Trump for months, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2018

The announcement appeared to signal a moment of decision for the Republican Party. Last week, Senator John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, denouncing the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” that he saw overtaking American politics

Those positions stood in marked contrast to Mr. Trump’s inward-looking, anti-immigration nationalism.

Good judges know what they must decide and what they need not. The late Judge John Butzner Jr. of the Fourth Circuit, for whom I clerked a quarter century ago, used to tell each new clerk, “Don’t talk to me about the law until you understand the facts.”

Judges must have the self-discipline to respect the limits of their role. Deciding only the case before you—whether that changes the law or simply reaffirms it—is a key judicial virtue. “God has a terrible problem,” runs the old joke. “He thinks he’s a federal judge

Good judges also listen to both parties. Former Justice Anthony Kennedy used to ask advocates, “What’s your strongest case?,

we have a president who is willing to politicize the deaths of two young children to score points against the opposition party. And the most shocking thing about seeing him scrape along a new moral bottom is this: It is no longer shocking at all.

‘Never Again’: Fighting Hate in a Changing Germany With Tours of Nazi Camps

Teaching history is a pillar of national identity in postwar Germany. That is why Sawsan Chebli, a Berlin state legislator with Palestinian heritage, recently came up with an idea that is radical even by the standards of a country that has dissected the horrors of its past like no other: make visits to Nazi concentration camps mandatory — for everyone.

“This is about who we are as a country,” she said in a recent conversation in Berlin. “We need to make our history relevant for everyone: Germans who no longer feel a connection to the past and immigrants who feel excluded from the present.”

The South Carolina Republican, himself a failed White House contender last year, embraced the Sanders plan as a point of contrast with his own, and he framed the consequences of failure in dire terms for his party.

Reality Check verdict: False - the Pakistani parliament passed a resolution "recommending" Chinese-language courses to be taught in Pakistan, but there's no suggestion Chinese will become an official language of the country.

The Senate did pass a resolution - but all it called for was "official Chinese language" courses to be launched for everyone involved with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), to reduce "communication barriers".

The misreporting was picked up by several Indian media outlets including ANI news agency, India Today and Financial Express, and portrayed as an example of Pakistan's growing closeness to China.

In 1864, riding a wave of nationalism, another former colonial power, Denmark, became engulfed in a doomed military conflict against Prussian and Austrian forces, experiencing a crushing loss that led to the surrender of around a third of its territory.

“People find the analogy interesting,” said Arni Pall Arnason, the former leader of Iceland’s Social Democratic Party, “in particular because of Britain’s total lack of realistic analysis of where its power lies and what appears to be the hubris behind the feeling that you do not need to do your research on anything.“Just like the Danes in 1864,” he said, “the Brits appear to have never analyzed the facts, just jumped off a cliff.”

Pro-Brexit politicians had expected to divide and rule among the 27 members of the European Union, and to be helped out by allies around the world, eager to strike trade deals with the British. Instead, London was confronted by an uncharacteristically united front in Brussels and outmaneuvered by Ireland, its former colony whose interests have been protected by the other member countries.

Yet, addressing the European Parliament, the French president — barely 40 and not yet a year in office — sounded almost like a biblical prophet, warning of the rising fascination with antidemocratic and “illiberal” ideas, “the deadly tendency which might lead our continent to the abyss, nationalism, giving up of freedom.”

Mr. Macron did not mention anyone by name — not Viktor Orban of Hungary, not Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, not the populists who won in Italy’s national election, not the far-right parties that have spread across Europe on hatred of immigrants, xenophobia, disdain for the rule of law, intolerance of dissent and suspiciousness of international cooperation. Nor did he name Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, though they are clearly an inspiration and model for the European far right.

The struggle between the traditional values of Western liberal democracy and the new forces of authoritarianism, intolerance and nationalism has become a defining challenge of the times.

The F.B.I. secretly arrested a former National Security Agency contractor in August and, according to law enforcement officials, is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer code developed by the agency to hack into the networks of foreign governments.

Mr. Martin, who at the time of his arrest was working as a contractor for the Defense Department after leaving the N.S.A., was charged with theft of government property and the unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents.

In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a Booz Allen contractor, took a vast trove of documents from the agency that were later passed to journalists