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
All your mind
Joseph found his betrothed to be with child-and not by him. "Being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, [he] resolved to divorce her quietly" rather than throw the book at her (Matthew 1:...
Marvin Olasky
Total recall
Congratulations, Samuel Alito! And congratulations, USA: It now looks like we have four out of nine justices who will not legislate from the bench. But we still have a structural problem in our fe...
Mailbag
Regrettable regret Here we go again. A "Christian spokesman" has wallowed in the mud of mammon and expects that a quick shower of forgiveness from the rest of us will restore him to the ple...
Joel Belz
Wal-Mart wisdom
It had been well over a year since I'd dropped by the local Wal-Mart for one of my occasional opinion surveys. And I was more and more irritated by what seemed to me to be a lopsided focus by the ...
Present at the creation
In the wrangles over gay marriage, some conservatives are proposing a simple solution: Have the government just get out of the marriage business. Small-government conservatives are saying, ...
Notebook
Sports
Championship windfall
Long after the Super Bowl fans leave Detroit, the money will stay-an estimated $302 million. That figure comes from a study conducted by Lawrence Technological University (in conjunction with the ...
Money
Spendthrift nation
A penny earned was more than a penny spent by Americans last year, as the U.S. personal savings rate dropped into negative territory for the first time since the Great Depression. The Comme...
Culture
Notable CDs
Notable Music
CATEGORY Best bluegrass album. WORLDVIEW "Cross a mile-high mountain or a windy plain, / my Lord is the captain of this train. / Won't you run toward the station when the whistle blows / an...
Movies & TV
Nanny McPhee
Nanny McPhee is a sort of cross between Mary Poppins and ABC's Supernanny (or, if you prefer, Fox's Nanny 911). While the film is neither the classic that is the former nor as instructive as the l...
Movies & TV
Grizzly Man
Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers living, alone or with a single companion, in the Alaskan wilderness among grizzly bears. In 2003, after a particularly long stay in the wild, Treadwell and his g...
Dispatches
The Buzz Sidebar
Finishing well
Christians of a certain age will have heard a familiar phrase in the president's State of the Union address last Monday: "Will we . . . finish well?" The context to this echo came at the en...
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Not-so-great escape With just a few days left in his 20-day jail sentence for stealing some copper tubing, Lance H. Gauthun attempted his own great escape from the Thurston County (Wash.) J...
Quotables
Quotables
"Don't ever ask the question, 'What else could happen?'" New Orleans mortgage banker Marcia Paul Leone after tornadoes on Feb. 2 blew through New Orleans neighborhoods five months after Hur...
The Buzz
The Buzz
SUPREME COURT The Senate approved the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court, 58-42. Four Democrats and all but one Republican voted for the 55-year-old circuit court judge on...