The 29-year-old was one of President Trump’s most trusted aides but she had an impossible job.

Does OTB’s Quick Takes section still serve a useful purpose?

Yet another top appointee is in the awkward position of having to defend himself from the Tweeter-in-Chief.

The Russia probe is focusing on the sequence of events surrounding hacked Clinton campaign and DNC emails.

The opinion journalist who has lately been writing the Black Panther comics is taking on one of the format’s most iconic characters.

A recent change to the way the social media giant selects articles readers see first has crushed a web magazine.

You’d think after 13 months in the White House they’d start understanding that there are rules.

This is very much why the security clearance process requires so much financial disclosure.

The White House chief of staff has downgraded the President’s son-in-law’s access to classified information. We’ll see how long that lasts.

A German court has ruled that the EU’s “right to be forgotten” does not require search engines to verify sites are free from malicious content before listing them.

We’ve rolled out a few modest updates to the site design.

The funk legend advocates a melting pot approach in a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone.

The February 2 episode of This American Life gets at some of my frustrations over our inability to have a meaningful discussion about pretty much anything.

As with any such discretionary power given to police, it will surely be abused. But the Parkland shooting was yet another in a long line of situations where obvious “red flags” were ignored until it was too late.

Daniel Triesman offers an explanation as to “Why the poor don’t vote to soak the rich.”

The Obama Administration called and wants its foreign policy back.

The shipping giant FedEx is coming under serious pressure to sever its ties with the NRA. Its president has issued a strong statement as to why they won’t.

I don’t see how the state legislature making tax decisions on the basis of the public position an company takes is legal under the 14th Amendment. 

Jonathan Bernstein thinks so and Chuck Todd and company outline a pretty strong case.

The President’s fecklessness here is incredible. Either take these people out of sensitive posts or take the responsibility for granting them waivers. 

Mark Levin says we’re “morons” and “illiterate in English” because we’ve quoted the NYT.

The octogenarian failed to get her party’s endorsement for a sixth term.

The President would like to copy Singapore’s zero-tolerance policy. The US Constitution stands in his way.

Salary-based definitions distort the conversation. And lifestyle-based definitions are a moving target.

Presidents are much more constrained in issuing and rolling back regulations than they or the public think.

A mass wave of mainland Chinese immigration to Australia has led to discrimination against Taiwanese expats there.

More than a dozen companies have ended relationships with the gun rights organization and protesters are demanding more follow suit.

Here’s one vote for ending this annoying practice.

Some thoughts on the biggest Marvel blockbuster yet. [Modest spoilers]

Dave Schuler argues the US would have a much better healthcare system if we had modeled it on VA clinics rather than private insurance.

An emerging technology will take “fake news” to a whole new level.

An emergency room physician explains why “assault rifle” wounds are much harder to treat than shots from a pistol.

I’ve noticed in the last day or two that, suddenly, all of Google’s search services have gotten ridiculously worse.

The U.S. Army is once again embroiled in an internecine fight over hats.

While the glass ceiling in high-level posts was shattered decades ago, men still dominate the field.

Elliot Cohen laments the lack of steel in the spine of the statesmen, diplomats, soldiers, and thinkers of the current generation.

NRO’s David French offers “A Gun-Control Measure Conservatives Should Consider.”

Rather than spamming every comment thread with issues, list any other issues here and we’ll see what we can do. 

Blake Hounshell has doubts about whether Trump colluded with Moscow.

Pork barrel politics is complicating Germany’s replacement of its 1970s fighter jet.

Nick Statt argues that the iPhone X is just too nice to ruin with a plastic case.

A series of scandals at Oxfam and other charitable organizations raise troubling questions.

On the one hand, this is cool. On the other, it’s just another sign of how damned old I am. I graduated high school in 1984. 

He’s tan. He’s rested. He’s old.

Al Hoffman Jr., a Florida-based real estate developer who was a leading fund-raiser for George W. Bush’s campaigns, said he would seek to marshal support among other Republican political donors for a renewed assault weapons ban.

The new Black Panther movie raises a variant of the central question of the superhero genre. [No significant spoilers]

Phil Carter makes an interesting argument but he’s ultimately mistaken.

The long-overdue redesign of OTB is now live.

While I don’t always agree with her, I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the sheer vitriol she inspires, given that she’s unfailingly polite, not discernibly partisan, and bends over backwards to acknowledge the merits of competing viewpoints.

Friday’s eight-hour shutdown was not the non-event it seemed from the outside.