One side effect of living on the West Coast of North America is that a lot of things happen while you sleep. That’s true for anyone anywhere, but the effect is amplified here by the three-hour time difference between here and the East Coast, and eight and nine hours...

Now what? It seems to me there are two pressing questions facing us now. One is sociopolitical: How will society respond? The answer surely will be – already is – mixed and messy, because many people are responding well but in America you can’t herd cats the way they...

In this diary’s first entry, on March 3, I recalled my experience as an eyewitness to the coup d’etat in Cambodia in early July 1997 and wrote that it taught me that “military takeovers take place in a country when civilian politics and institutions have broken down.”...