There’s some scientific justification for using vaccine passports to allow vaccinated people — and only vaccinated people — back into restaurants, movie theaters and other indoor spaces. But so far, the Biden administration has declined to impose government standards for such certificates. Without a uniform standard, it may be hard for individual restaurants or other businesses to collect proof of vaccine status. This could hobble the reopening effort and slow the return to normal life.

I recently asked the undergrads in my class on virtue and vice to send me a brief note about a time when they either forgave someone in a meaningful way or found that they couldn’t. Their notes spoke of love, sorrow, finding a way — or not — to maintain relationships in the wake of wrongs. Nobody mentioned canceling anybody.

The sharing economy, from taking Uber rides to uploading our lives to the cloud, seems so 21st century. But electricity has been all about networks since 1909. That’s when Thomas Edison’s protege Samuel Insull began tying farm towns into his nascent Chicago grid. He found that by serving different patterns of demand, shared generating stations could deliver more power, cutting the price of modernity for everyone.

Among the unsettling revelations about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is the number of rioters who served in the military. Of the more than 300 people so far charged with crimes, at least 30 are veterans, and three are currently enlisted in either the Army Reserve or National Guard. The Pentagon believes some active-duty troops also participated in the siege.

Free speech, and so free thought, is under threat in America today.

When President Joe Biden took office, he inherited a foreign policy disaster in Afghanistan.

The U.S. is set to recover from the pandemic-induced recession faster than other rich countries thanks to its successful vaccination effort and copious relief spending. Though it might seem like weakness in the rest of the world will create a drag on U.S. growth, it actually provides an opportunity to increase exports.

If anyone was still “uneducated” about the insidious and brutal nature of racism in this country, the recent contemptible slaughter of eight people, including six Asian women, in the Atlanta area, along with the early police statements and media coverage of the crime, should clear everything right up.

Ask on the street in Hong Kong if passers-by will get the COVID-19 vaccine, and you may hear what I did: “Sometime.” “Maybe.” “No.”

Tuesday’s attack on several Atlanta-area spas that left eight people dead has renewed concerns about violence directed toward Asian Americans amid the pandemic.

A potential crisis and a grave political embarrassment for the new administration have collided on the U.S. southern border. Migrant crossings, especially of unaccompanied children, have surged, and the systems meant to cope with such arrivals are under pressure. President Joe Biden needs to move quickly before the problem gets any worse.

The sanctity and security of the U.S. Capitol has not been breached since that woeful day in January. But whispers and threats circulate in dark corners of the internet, and a nation remains on edge.

One of the throughlines of U.S. history is the progressive expansion of the franchise thanks to the struggle of oppressed Americans to make real the most basic promise of a constitutional democracy: “One person, one vote.”

Sparring between Washington and Moscow, a diplomatic, political and military constant since the end of WWII and start of the Cold War, is rightly back after the Trump years of weird and dangerous American subservience to Russian predations. Thank you, Joe Biden, for calling a killer a killer and, yes, thank you Vladimir Putin, for resuming your role as the heavy in the relationship.

Last March, the Trump administration implemented regulations to make it easier for U.S. companies to export firearms. Since the new rules took effect, overseas sales of U.S. semiautomatic pistols more than doubled, with potentially devastating consequences. The Biden administration should restore the previous restrictions and take additional measures to prevent U.S.-supplied guns from ending up in the hands of criminal gangs, human rights abusers and terrorists.

President Joe Biden is riding high thanks to his success in pushing through the massive $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill he signed last week. Polls have found that the bill was supported by as many as 70% of Americans, and the president’s approval rating has hit 55%, a level last attained by Barack Obama in 2009, the first year of his presidency.

Misinformation could ruin America.

President Joe Biden is going to be the biggest deal of a president since FDR, or so seemed his desire in his COVID-19 speech recently, a good thing to do but done poorly. No issue has been bigger than the virus in American lives the past year or so, and it was important for him to address it in his first big-time speech since inauguration day. Sadly, his implicit pretense that he was today’s vaccine champion was ungrateful, divisive and phony.

As more Americans get vaccinated, there is increasing talk of “vaccine passports.” There are strong emotional reactions to this idea, positive and negative, but my attempt at a more analytical view leads me to a conclusion that is not entirely satisfying (even to me): America should work to develop vaccine passports but never actually require them.