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When he’s not busy overseeing a crucial counteroffensive aimed at sending Russia’s forces down a “Highway to Hell,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pumps himself up by listening to AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses. Ukraine’s leader opened up about his musical tastes — and an intense morning routine involving the headbanging sounds of classic rock — in a new interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. Burnett, who had traveled to Kyiv to interview Zelensky more than 16 months into the war, asked Ukraine’s leader during the wide-ranging interview that aired Wednesday whether he has any time to unwind by reading or listening...

On this date in 1862, the American commercial shipper Nathaniel Gordon was hanged at the Tombs for slave trading. Importing slaves to the U.S. had been nominally illegal for over half a century, but had never been strongly enforced. In 1820, slaving (regardless of destination) had even been defined as piracy, a capital crime. Importation of kidnapped Africans into the United States did significantly abate during this period, and that was just fine with U.S. slaveowners ever paranoid of servile rebellion. But a voracious demand for conscript labor persisted elsewhere whatever the legal situation. About 3 million slaves arrived to...

Ugh. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush argued that deporting America's illegal immigrants is not the answer to the country's immigration issues at Tuesday's GOP debate. Jeb called the action, "Un-American." "Twelve million illegal immigrants, to send them back, 500,000 a month, is just not possible. And it's not embracing American values.

Poor Jeb Bush. He needed a triumph in Tuesday night’s debate to do something to turn around his degenerating campaign — something dynamic, something memorable, something powerful. Bush was substantive. But so was Marco Rubio. He was detailed. But so was Carly Fiorina. He was serious. But so was Ted Cruz. He wasn’t out of his depth, the way Ben Carson was when he talked about foreign policy and banking policy — in a series of answers that gave new meaning to the word “incoherence.” He wasn’t bizarre, the way Donald Trump was when he said we should have taken...

Here in New York, the Rev. Al Sharpton tends to be seen as a perennial political outsider and gadfly - his detractors inevitably dismiss him as a publicity-seeking hustler - but that cynical, out-of-date view ignores the impressive political network Sharpton has diligently been building from coast to coast. In a dozen or so black communities where elders tend to monopolize leadership of the churches, schools, civic groups, political clubs and other key institutions, Sharpton has been busy grooming young, ambitious candidates for office. By playing the role of mentor, promoter and fund-raiser, Sharpton does what many shortsighted black politicians...

Contemporaries described the smuggler Jean Lafitte as "graceful and elegant in manners ... accomplished in conversation." Women found him charming. Some of the leading figures of New Orleans openly associated with him. But to young Louisiana Gov. W.C.C. Claiborne, there was just one word for Lafitte: "pirate." Even so, as historian Bennett H. Wall records, "It was not the privateering and occasional piracy ... that particularly annoyed Claiborne and the government of the United States. ... Rather, it was the fact that Lafitte and his men openly flaunted customs laws by selling their booty at much lower prices than legitimate...