Day: April 16, 2019

Notre Dame de Paris was never the preferred cathedral of kings. French monarchs avoided it, preferring to be crowned at Reims, about 80 miles northeast of Paris, and buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, which is now a Parisian suburb.

Notre Dame was instead the cathedral of ordinary Parisians. Since the Middle Ages, it’s been the backdrop against which the city’s inhabitants have lived their lives. The building, which stands on a small island in the Seine River, was a constant amid the upheaval of the French Revolution and the terrors of the Nazi occupation. As one 14th century scholar …

Bernie Sanders’s Fox News town hall, which aired Monday night, showed that contrary to the belief of many of his detractors (and some of his supporters), the Vermont senator really does have more than one rhetorical mode.

There was the mode he used for the town hall part, and the mode he used for the Fox News part — represented by anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who liberally interspersed questions from the audience with questions of their own.

When speaking directly to audience members or to the TV audience watching at home, Sanders was sincere and open. When …