IN ORDINARY times, with just over three weeks before Election Day, no one would expect the presidential candidates to think of anything but maximizing their political advantage. These are not ordinary times.

Readers object to the tone and timing of a Post Magazine piece about the Obamas.

VIRGINIANS WILL cast a defining vote in the state's history when they go to the polls in three weeks to select a successor to U.S. Sen. John W. Warner (R). Virginia needs a senator who can sustain Mr. Warner's 30-year tradition of label-defying leadership, in which he put his state and country...

ASERIES OF new reports warns of a grim future for the planet's flora and fauna. Most recently, the alarm was sounded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which last week issued a study with the chilling news that 25 percent of the world's wild mammals face extinction...

The focus of new supervision and regulation should be on the largest financial institutions.

EVIAN, France -- Looking down on the smoking ruins of the world's stock markets and financial institutions from the Alpine foothills, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took consolation where he could find it last week by celebrating the joys of American decline.

Unimpressed by Charles de Gaulle's droll observation that the graveyards are full of indispensable men, Michael Bloomberg, New York City's 108th mayor, has decided that he is indispensable. So the law limiting mayors to two terms must be revised to allow three terms.

The good news for Barack Obama is that the calamities in the financial world may have created an insuperable barrier to John McCain's White House ambitions.

The best thing about presidential elections is that they mark a break with the past. But that can also create a dangerous chasm -- a period of uncertainty while the new administration hires its people and frames its policies. Meanwhile, the world's problems fester.

Looking back, big new homes with little or no furniture foretold today's mortgage mess.

I am one of the Washington region's thousands of citizen-volunteers who serve as election judges on Election Day. On Nov. 4, I will help run a local polling place. Since last fall in Montgomery County, we have been training judges for what is expected to be the heaviest-ever turnout for a U.S....

Whenever I read articles about the homeless in Washington ["Remaining Homeless Moved Out of Shelter," Metro, Sept. 27], I always think of "Rick."

On Nov. 14, 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Council members Kwame Brown and Jack Evans held a news conference at Parcel 42, a swath of public land at Seventh and R Streets NW, to announce the approval of an affordable housing development long desired by the Shaw community.