The U.S. Senate’s abdication of duty at the start of this Memorial Day weekend, when 11 senators (nine of them Republican) did not even show up to vote on authorizing an investigation of the January 6 insurrection, makes the item below particularly timely.Fifty-four senators (including six Republicans) voted to approve the investigative commission. Only 35 opposed it.But in the institutionalized rule-of-the-minority that is the contemporary Senate, the measure “failed.

George Floyd’s murder last Memorial Day persuaded a lot of people in sports to use their public profile to fight racism in America. So it was fitting that the NBA, its players’ union, and the WNBA players’ union joined together Tuesday, the first anniversary of Floyd’s death, to publicly challenge Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

When I was in medical school in the 1980s, a surgeon came to my clinical-medicine course to talk about how to guide patients in making decisions. He presented a scenario in which a patient with breast cancer had to decide between a lumpectomy and a mastectomy.

Some years ago, I was given an assignment by Vanity Fair to track down war criminals and former dictators who, despite being ousted from power, hadn’t yet seen justice. As I hunted down their villas on the French Riviera, one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the world, or in the cobbled side streets of Paris’s 16th arrondissement, I was reminded, not for the first time, that after war or upheaval, bad guys rarely face a timely reckoning.