Watch and wait
Election night could provide a quick White House winner, or a flood of mail-in ballots and social division could delay results for weeks
Voices
Andrée Seu Peterson
Braver new world
The pro-life movement, no thanks to me, scored a victory last month when Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota signed House bill 1215, which outlaws abortion except to save the mother's life. This is j...
Marvin Olasky
Who's fault is it?
I've recently reached my limit for complaints from Islamists about how Westerners are corrupting their countries. I'm tired of hearing that Americans in particular are shipping in pornographic and...
Joel Belz
'I am not afraid to die'
The story of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan fellow who was sentenced to death because he had converted to Christianity some 16 years ago, was changing so fast last week that it was hard to tell just whi...
Escalating depravity
A new breed of movies makes the old slasher and horror flicks look like Disney cartoons. As film critic Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Daily News describes them, movies like Hostel, Wolf Cr...
Notebook
Sports
The shoe fits at the big dance
This is not what college basketball meant by a Cinderella story. Cinderella teams are supposed to exit in the Sweet 16. Tell that to George Mason University-perhaps the most unlikely Final Four te...
Religion
Cutting back
Money woes continue to dog the mainline denominations. For example, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) must chop $9.15 million from its budget for the next two years and lay off as much as one-fourt...
Culture
Notable Books
Bestselling books
CONTENT With alternating humor and pathos, newspaper columnist John Grogan tells the story of a marriage and the family pet that witnessed and caused many of the book's events. GIST This bo...
Movies & TV
Tsotsi
"Tsotsi" is a South African slang term for "thug." It's the name by which the lead character in the South African film Tsotsi identifies himself, and it's apt. Somewhere buried deep in his past, T...
Movies & TV
The Evidence
The typical programming philosophy of TV executives is overkill. Find a successful show, turn it into a formula, then keep replicating it. In the "police procedural" genre, we follow law enforceme...
Movies & TV
Doctor Who
From 1963 to 1989, Doctor Who was among the most popular exports of British television. During those 26 years, the eccentric Timelord, traversing time and space in his police call box, kept saving...
Dispatches
The Buzz Sidebar
Three strikes and ...
John McCain should hope that presidential politics allows every batter four strikes. He's just swung and missed for the third time since President Bush took office. Mr. McCain has been help...
Quotables
"I'm used to people judging me without even knowing me. I'm in high school." Teenager and pro golfer Michelle Wie on how she deals with trash talking from older golfers. "I got them ...
Quick Takes
Gator bait
Gator bait A Bonita Springs, Fla., woman had quite a shock when she went to answer her front door. It wasn't a door-to-door salesman that had invaded her gated neighborhood. It was an 8-foo...
The Buzz
The Buzz
IRAN UN Security Council members agreed to impose a 30-day deadline on Iran to halt its nuclear program. U.S. ambassador John Bolton called it "the first major step" to deal with Iran's "20-year-o...