EARLY IN 1990, about three months after the Berlin Wall fell and Eastern Europe's communist regimes imploded, I had the opportunity to travel through Hungary, Romania, and what was then still a unified Czechoslovakia. Many of the people I met during that trip told me what it had been like to live in a dictatorship where expressing criticism of the government could lead to persecution, imprisonment, or worse.

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FORCING UKRAINE to agree to a 30-day cease-fire with Russia was easy. President Trump merely had to halt the flow of military equipment and suspend most intelligence sharing with Kyiv. As a result, Russian troops were able to recapture the largest town in the Kursk region occupied by Ukraine last August, in the process killing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers. Faced with such a ruthless demonstration of Washington's power to get its way, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was left with little choice but to knuckle under to the American demand.

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THIS WEEK, Jews worldwide will celebrate the festival of Purim. It is a joyful holiday replete with lively rituals, especially the exuberant public reading of the Book of Esther.

The biblical text, set in ancient Persia during the reign of Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes), recounts an attempt to exterminate the Jews. The plan is conceived by Haman, a fanatically antisemitic vizier who persuades the emperor that his Jewish subjects are disloyal. Ahasuerus signs a decree authorizing Haman "to destroy, massacre, and exterminate all the Jews, young and old, children and women ... and to plunder their possessions."

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IT WAS on Thursday that my wife mentioned that we have to take our car for its annual safety inspection soon; the current inspection sticker expires at the end of the month. It was also on Thursday that the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted handily to scrap mandatory yearly inspections for car- and truck owners north of the Massachusetts border. The vote, long overdue, was 212-143; the bill now goes to the Senate.

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I HAVE never been to Mar-a-Lago. But I can imagine some of the things I might see if I were to explore President Trump's mansion.

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