"The Incomparable Mr. Buckley," a new PBS documentary about the singular opinion journalist who animated American conservatism in the decades after World War II, opens with a clip from "Laugh-In." Dan Rowan and Dick Martin's goofy comedy show was known for its silly jokes and catchphrases ("Sock it to me!"), but in December 1970 the hosts persuaded William F. Buckley Jr. to come on as a guest and take questions from the cast.

One cast member, Jeremy Lloyd, observing that Buckley always seemed to be seated during his public appearances, asked: "Does this mean you can't think on your feet?"

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LIKE MOST Americans, I got my taxes filed before this week's Tax Day deadline. And like most Americans, I got money back from the IRS. You probably did too. After all, nearly two-thirds of tax returns result in a refund.

That's not a good thing.

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EVER SINCE the Supreme Court ruled last year that President Biden had no authority to unilaterally write off $430 billion in student loans, he and his aides have been crowing that they intended to do it anyway.

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AS VICE PRESIDENT in 2011, Joe Biden had a front-row seat to one of the great foreign policy blunders of the Obama administration: the unilateral withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq. President Obama acted despite warnings that a pullout would leave a vacuum the region's most malign forces would exploit. Those warnings were borne out, as the fanatical jihadists of ISIS swept into the region and unleashed their reign of terror.

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"I AM A scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice," says Randall Kennedy, a prominent Harvard Law School professor whose teaching and writing has focused on civil rights, race relations, and the intersection of racial conflict and the law. Kennedy, who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, has written numerous books on various aspects of race in American life, including a history of the N-word. He is a Black man who was born in the Jim Crow South and grew up in a household where, in his words, "tales of racial oppression and racial resistance were staples of conversation."

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