When Joe Biden takes the oath of office as the nation’s 46th president today, he will face a dramatically different world than the one he saw as vice president four years ago.

Despite Charleston County’s educational efforts, too many of us still “wishcycle.”

South Carolina’s Senate has never been known as a reform-minded body. In fact, it was designed from the start to be conservative in the traditional sense of that word: resistant to change, any change, good or bad. And reforms are, by definition, changes. That resistance to change still preva…

Last year, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we urged everyone to recommit to his unfinished business.

President-elect Joe Biden has promised to repair the strained relations between Europe and the United States, but he faces a difficult task. Friction between the European Union and the United States was growing before President Donald Trump took office and will not simply disappear when he i…

It was easy enough to predict that S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster would use his State of the State address on Wednesday to urge legislators to plow more state funding into 4-year-old kindergarten, broadband infrastructure, need-based college scholarships and workforce training grants and to lift t…

As Charleston updates its comprehensive plan, the city hired consultants to analyze its lack of affordable housing. Their findings, which Community Data Platforms presented Monday to the Charleston Planning Commission, are worrisome:

Last month, as the Northeast was bracing for its first big winter storm, and as parents, educators and soup makers the nation over were starting to weigh in on the suddenly urgent new question, the Greenville County School District did something so sensible that it’s hard to believe it came …

Well-meaning people disagree about how best to address this awful behavior, but the president clearly must be held accountable.

The Monday night encounter between Upstate legislators and an activist group probably wouldn’t have attracted much attention a week earlier: just a bunch of disaffected voters venting to lawmakers over COVID restrictions, unspecified “corruption and non-integrity” in state and local governme…

We’re glad to see S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson repudiate his former deputy’s efforts to drum up attendance at the rally that spawned last week’s deadly insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol, and to state in unequivocal terms that Joe Biden is the legitimate president-elect.

In one of the largest corporate criminal settlements in U.S. history, the Justice Department last week slammed Boeing with more than $2.5 billion in fines and compensation, rightly criticizing the aviation giant for tragically choosing “profit over candor” in two plane crashes that killed 34…

The S.C. Legislature has no more important obligation than providing a decent education to all children. It's right there in the state constitution (hence: obligation), and getting it right will do more than all the business-friendly efforts to attract good jobs to our state, chip away at po…

With S.C. House leaders pushing to negotiate the sale of Santee Cooper to NextEra and Senate leaders signaling that they might be interested in offloading the state-owned utility despite huge problems with the initial proposal, it’s good to see a handful of senators working to make sure we k…

State legislators could stay busy this entire year dealing with nothing but the pandemic: deciding how to allocate limited state funding, how to revive the economy, how to make up for all the damage the pandemic has done to children, who should be required to be vaccinated — all alongside pr…

Charleston County government is not unlike a soap opera: Characters come and go and see their influence rise and fall over time, but many overarching story lines remain similar. So when council resumes its regular meetings next week with two new members, a new chair and vice chair and a plat…

Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol seemed to serve as a wake-up call for many members of Congress, who finally realized that pretending that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" or "stolen" encouraged such lawlessness. We hope it also serves as a wake-up call for ordinary Americans.

This is not who we are. This is not what we do. This is the stuff of banana republics, of third-world despots. America is the nation that for nearly two and a half centuries has accepted the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. We have not merely accepted this; we have embraced it, even when we were deeply disappointed, even when we were certain that our fellow Americans had made a bad choice. Our nation’s experiment in self-governance has survived longer than any other precisely because it has at its very core this peaceful transfer of power.

Thursday is the start of Restaurant Week South Carolina, an 11-day-long event designed to showcase many of the state’s greatest places to eat. And while the pandemic may understandably keep many of us from savoring the week as we normally might — by reserving a table and dining in — we still…

Federal bureaucrats shouldn't penalize small businesses that shifted gears last year to help protect their communities amid the pandemic. 

S.C. House Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford is absolutely right: The Department of Motor Vehicles shouldn’t be allowed to issue license tags emblazoned with the Sons of Confederate Veterans seal. His bill just doesn't go far enough.

The swearing-in of Kristin Graziano as Charleston County’s first new sheriff in more than three decades was a lowkey affair — as are most public events amid the pandemic — but there were encouraging signs that she has the temperament and skill to build new bridges between one of South Caroli…

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace made the right and honorable decision. Last week, the new 1st District representative announced that she will not join a small group of rebellious GOP lawmakers, including fellow South Carolina U.S. Reps. Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Joe Wilson and William Timmons, in supp…

When The Citadel unveiled its new strategic plan last year, its authors were mindful that its success would hinge in large part on the school's finances; today, the military college clearly has a brighter future than ever thanks to the generous support of one of its successful graduates.

South Carolina is a very independent-spirited and business-minded state, so it’s not necessarily surprising that the design of our state flag has been outsourced to the private sector for decades.

We welcome a federal appeals court decision that upholds the legality of requiring hospitals to publish the prices they charge patients for items and services. Hospitals had until Friday to start doing so or face a potential fine of $300 per day.

We’ve been hearing for months that holding in-person classes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic would exacerbate South Carolina’s teacher shortage. And it turns out that we did start the fall semester with substitutes in more classrooms than usual — but not for the reasons we expected.

Since The Post and Courier exposed poor living conditions inside Joseph Floyd Manor last spring — a grim reality later formally confirmed by a federal inspection — many have rallied to make improvements inside the publicly owned high-rise that is home to some of Charleston’s poorest and most…

The proposal to send $2,000 stimulus payments to Americans appears to be dead for now. That is a good thing. The patently political and costly plan is a terribly inefficient way to spend federal money.

It’s not enough to create new, safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. If it’s not maintained and treated with the same respect and consideration given to motorists, then walking and biking will remain a distinctly second-class way to get around.

Happy, happy New Year. Most of us can’t remember the last time so many people were so excited to say goodbye and good riddance to the year just ended.

We didn’t have a lot of hope that Senate President Harvey Peeler would be able to get all 45 of his colleagues to agree to wear masks in the Senate chamber and in the senators’ office building. Mask-wearing has become so politicized, and some senators have been so adamant about not wearing t…

The extended silence regarding the proper use of ketamine — which played a role in the October 2019 death of a Mount Pleasant man who was injected with it after resisting police officers — gives us little comfort that authorities are learning what they should to reduce the likelihood of futu…

The first shot of the second wave of COVID-19 vaccinations in South Carolina came Monday at a nursing home in Greenville. Now the question becomes: How do we get enough Americans to take the shots so the nation soon reaches “herd immunity”? There is no single answer.

It’s no mystery why S.C. law requires governing boards to release the names of at least three finalists for top jobs: It gives the public a chance to vet the candidates and provide the boards with information they might not otherwise have, in order to make the best selection.

One of the less noted storylines from last month’s election was the continued movement of states toward allowing marijuana for medical use. It’s time for South Carolina to join them.

A trip to the beach is among our greatest encounters with nature: There's excitement where waves lap onto the sands. Views of the vast expanse of ocean. The warmth of the sun and a gentle breeze.

A few things have become much more clear in the months after the Army Corps of Engineers unveiled an ambitious plan to build a $1.75 billion barrier around the Charleston peninsula.

The outrage over Charleston City Councilman Harry Griffin’s involvement in a rally downtown that drew people who identified with the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys sparked condemnations from council colleagues and community members disappointed with the first-term councilman. That’s c…

If ever there was a year to strip away the obsessions of this world and return to basics, it's 2020. Today, as we celebrate a Christmas like no other, we return to the origins of our celebration, as recounted through the Gospel according to Luke. May you have a blessed Christmas.

Christmas and New Year’s Eve typically rank among our most social holiday celebrations, and while the nation enters a promising phase in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic with two vaccines in early stages of distribution, we simply can’t let down our guard as much as we might want to.

Among the notable bills awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature during his last weeks in office is a welcome bipartisan measure to help strengthen partnerships between historically black colleges and universities and federal agencies. 

If you’re looking for something really dangerous to do, to put your friends and family and co-workers at risk, you might try packing shoulder-to-shoulder into a bar with hundreds of other unmasked people, where there's about a 99% chance that at least one person has COVID-19.

When the U.S. Capitol reopens to the public after the coronavirus pandemic is deemed to have subsided to a safer point, we're glad to know that visitors will have a chance to learn about an important but long-overlooked part of South Carolina history.

New Hampshire’s Legislature has taken COVID-19 a lot more seriously than ours, moving its sessions into an arena and sequestering unmasked members in a separate area. Earlier this month, while the S.C. House was holding an organizational session in its chamber, with masks and social distanci…

During the past five years, hurricanes, rain bombs and rising seas have inundated large swaths of South Carolina, and flooding has become a top issue — often the top issue — not only in Charleston but in other low-lying communities.

Those most concerned about the health of our oceans and their inhabitants have grown increasingly alarmed about the accumulation of plastic pollutants, and a new report provides further evidence that they’re right. Last month, the conservation nonprofit Oceana released a troubling analysis o…

With South Carolina breaking COVID-19 infection records on what seems like a daily basis, it’s not surprising that school districts are increasingly deciding to send students home early for a few days of virtual learning this month and keep them there for a few extra days after the Christmas…