I am not a Jew for Jesus but I am definitely a Jew for Christmas. Christmas is one of the best things you Christians have given us, along with mac and cheese, Bono, croquet and politeness.

A heroic moral victory for the New York Mets. It may be the only kind of victory we're achieving this season, but he set a good example for professional athletes and the rest of us.

Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.

My colleague Ross Douthat wrote that any time you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, he always lets you down.

On the [Betsy] DeVos case, I agree that the gun - her gun position is kind of weird, kind of crazy, but I do think she does know about public schools.

It's hard to imagine a party that is not corrupted by hatred.

If I were Donald Trump, I would definitely not pick Mitt Romney because it's very easy for Mitt Romney to have have a separate foreign policy operatus in the State Department that would run a dissenting foreign policy from the White House foreign policy. There, I think the populist America-first foreign policy of Donald Trump does run against a potential rival.