The House select committee hearings into the Capitol insurrection have established two facts virtually beyond debate: One, former President Donald Trump is culpable for what his followers did that day in support of his unprecedented attempt to overthrow a valid election. And, two, Trump’s scheme was aided by deep flaws in the federal statutes guiding the process of counting and certifying electoral votes.

When a business signals “whites only,” it does not matter if it is written in ink or pixels, words or code. The discrimination is the same. The harm is the same. And the legal consequences should be the same.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to one of the world’s largest rainforests, second only to the Amazon. Larger than Alaska, it contains a massive peatlands area that has trapped the equivalent of three years’ worth of global carbon emissions.

We see so many remarkable families whose loved ones have been silenced by bullets, stand before crowds and cameras and, despite unfathomable grief, plead for their fellow Americans to act out against senseless, preventable gun violence.

In this era of reflexive counterpunching, where powerful people and institutions are often conditioned not to back down, public apologies are rare. When they do come, they are often begrudging statements designed to silence critics, not soul-searching, heartfelt acknowledgments of wrongdoing.

After months of doing nothing, Democrats in Congress appear poised to achieve something at last — or rather, multiple somethings, from protections for same-sex marriage to tens of billions of dollars toward computer chips to, finally, an economic package passed through reconciliation. There’s still room for the majority to make this last something the best it can be.

Last week, a bipartisan group of 16 U.S. senators agreed on a long-awaited proposal to fix the Electoral Count Act, the ramshackle 1887 law that then-President Donald Trump used to try to overturn the 2020 election.

The beauty of our democratic system of government is that anyone can get elected. But that feature is also a bug. We suspect we aren’t alone among Americans who watch some of the antics on Capitol Hill and think, “How on Earth did that person get elected?” Sometimes it seems that politicians know little more than how to win votes.

A time-honored Washington axiom holds that one should never attribute to scandal what could be explained by garden-variety incompetence. In the case of the Secret Service’s mysteriously missing text messages, however, mere ineptitude doesn’t quite fit the facts.

The popularity of every Star Wars and Star Trek spin-off imaginable on TV streaming services shows how much Americans remain intrigued by the possibility “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” But 53 years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, our excitement waxes and wanes with the ups and downs of real-world space exploration orchestrated by NASA. Consider a spate of recent news stories, which have alternately grabbed brief snatches of our attention or been mostly greeted by yawns.

During the sentencing trial of the confessed Parkland shooter, jurors and families have had to hear the blasts of rifle shots echo in the hallways of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They listened to the recording of a boy moaning and pleading for help. Jurors intently watched video clips of Nikolas Cruz opening fire against a group of students who cowered in an alcove. They saw footage of athletic director Christopher Hixon crawl to safety after being wounded only to have Cruz catch up to him, raise his weapon and shoot him.

It’s been more than a quarter-century since President Bill Clinton memorably proclaimed that “the era of big government is over.”

We can’t disagree with the anger aimed at Joe Manchin for dragging the Senate along for months before finally admitting there’s no pared-down version of a Build Back Better bill he will support after all. Manchin uses inflation as an excuse but simultaneously says he can’t countenance raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and businesses, which might actually help curb inflation.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade places the reproductive health of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in grave jeopardy, as this population suffers a high amount of abuse, including sexual assault.

Democratic discontent with President Joe Biden is boiling over into the press. His polling is abysmal, his age is showing and the Democrats are facing a potential wipeout in the midterm elections in November. Democrats are taking their complaints, mostly off the record, to reporters.

The ways we think about the COVID-19 pandemic have evolved with the virus: In 2020, it was a potentially deadly threat we could avoid by being careful; in 2021, it was something that was likely to infect everyone eventually; and now, it’s becoming seen as a persistent health hazard that can reinfect people multiple times, each time inflicting cumulative damage and increasing the odds of long-duration symptoms.

As COVID-19 killed thousands of Americans every day in late 2020 and early 2021, the U.S. government’s rapid success in shepherding the creation, emergency approval and initial rollout of safe, effective, free vaccines was a major public health victory — one made all the more amazing because it came under a president who spent part of his last year in office saying the pandemic was less of a problem than it was. But in another twist, after a good start to his pandemic response, President Joe Biden — who defeated Donald Trump in a campaign that emphasized he would be a stable, reliable hand on the wheel — is increasingly facing criticism that he has failed to rise to the challenge on two key issues.

The war on drugs has been long, hard-fought and expensive.

Get your act together, Congress.

On a recent camping trip to Kings Canyon National Park I had the opportunity to escape the light-polluted vistas of the city and look through a pair of binoculars at the stars under a dark Sierra Nevada sky.