By persisting in the stolen-election lie, Lee Zeldin took the side of the pro-Trump armed attackers and betrayed United States democracy.

Like many Americans, I have struggled to come to any kind of understanding of the violence and destruction taken to Washington just over a week ago. But one thing is clear to me as a late-coming student of slavery in the Colonial and early Republic North: Mob violence is no aberration in our history.

Nettie and I took a flying drive to Delaware this week to inspect the campus of a boarding school. Pandemic ennui makes even the shortest jaunt seem like a grand holiday.

The riot at the Capitol may have overshadowed the Georgia special election that elevated Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate, but it’s too bad it did, because that unlikely turn of events nudged the federal government closer to the ability to actually do something.