Athenian democracy lasted about 250 years from the early seventh century B.C.E. It was a magnificently successful experiment, involving military do...

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) is remembered mainly because he was beheaded for insisting that his boss, Henry V111, was breaching divine law by claim...

Following the opening presentation by the January 6th Committee, when the whole country heard from a succession of police officers about how they w...

The economic and political impact of immigrants and refugees on American lives has become a lightning-rod issue, sparking strong feelings on both s...

I was among the many “experts” convinced that Vladimir Putin would not invade Ukraine. Our thinking still seems logical: why would he attack the se...

By far the biggest difference between the two main political parties in America resides in their differing approaches to the threat of global warmi...

For the first time in history the number of people in the United States who identify as belonging to a church, mosque or synagogue is less than tho...

I recall well a moving story that Maurice Brick, author and fluent Gaelic speaker, told me many years ago. He comes from the heart of the Ballyferr...

I attended the annual commemoration of the untimely deaths in 1832 of 57 Irish laborers who worked and died at a stretch of railway track in Cheste...

When the imperatives of the law clash with the dynamic push and pull of power politics, the result is often an unseemly public mess. In the 2000 pr...

I recall clearly a conversation with my uncle, Michael O'Shea, shortly after I came to New York in the early seventies. He and his older brother, P...

I watched an interview with Marty Walsh this week. He is the Secretary of Labor in Washington who started his working career with Laborers Local 22...