The idyllic holiday scene — piles of presents, smiles all around — rarely matches reality. Who among us hasn’t faced the awkward silence of a gift that falls flat? Who hasn’t been disappointed by one we’ve received?

Now that pollsters are declaring President Joe Biden a “failure,” historians will reckon with too many economic signals rendering the prevailing narrative little more than media noise.

It’s wrong for the incoming president to start suing newspapers and it’s a transparent effort to bully the press, but there Donald Trump stood last Monday, proclaiming that “we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as our elections.”

Even a terribly wrong-headed decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on a president’s post-White House criminal immunity can’t undo Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions correctly ruled Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

The commutation of the prison sentence of former Luzerne County judge Michael Conahan by President Joe Biden is a disgraceful act that dishonors the children and families victimized by the judge and his accomplice, Mark Ciavarella, during the notorious “kids for cash” scandal two decades ago.

The billionaire Elon Musk and the California venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have started a debate about the role of government that we should be having — but it might not go the way they would hope. They don’t like government agencies that stop corporations like theirs from ripping off consumers.

If you’re seeing and hearing drones or other such flying things flashing in the sky, it’s absolutely certain that you are not imagining it and you are not alone. However, what remains troublingly uncertain is what is actually going on and it’s a question that government has done a lousy job answering.

In 1954, a few people in the town of Bellingham, Washington, reported seeing pits and dings on their windshields — perhaps the work of vandals. Roadblocks were quickly set up. This became front-page news in nearby Seattle, prompting people to rush to check their own windshields. Thousands then reported that they, too, had mysterious dings, in an ever-widening area from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the once-indicted and once-impeached attack dog for right-wing causes, is trying to use the courts to impose his state’s harsh abortion limits elsewhere with his specious state lawsuit against New Paltz Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter for prescribing and sending abortion medications to a woman in Texas. He needs to lose this case.

FBI Director Chris Wray is resigning several years before the end of his statutory 10-year term for one, terrible reason: Donald Trump had promised to fire Wray when he’s sworn in as president next month and install the unqualified and unfit Kash Patel, a real disaster for justice.

Romania’s presidential election last month shocked the country and its government when Calin Georgescu, an obscure far-right candidate, secured the most votes in the first round.

Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is being hailed by many as a hero.

Republicans should be enjoying a blissful post-election honeymoon, if only they could stop bickering long enough to bask in that loving feeling.

Daniel Penny has been acquitted of the subway killing of Jordan Neely, but the New York City criminal justice and mental-health-care establishment is guilty of creating the conditions whereby a deeply disturbed man known to be in the throes of psychological crisis wound up melting down on a subway car, hurling threats at passengers. Should Penny, a Marine trained in hand-to-hand combat, really have absolved of any penalties after placing Neely in an asphyxiating chokehold, and keeping him in it even after he was debilitated? From where we sit, it feels wrong to endorse his actions and its consequences.

Thirty-one years ago, my husband, Bruce, and I took on the role of a lifetime. I became the legal guardian, and Bruce the caregiver, for my nephew Dan Bivins, who was 7 years old at the time and born with Down syndrome. That still stands as one of the luckiest days of my life.