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2 children dead in West Point, older brother held

Joel Achenbach

Scandals, real and imagined

Last updated Friday, May 17, 2013 - 1:17pm

I was 12 years old during Sam Ervin’s Watergate hearings, and watched them over the course of a long, hot summer, a time when I seemed to register the startling fact that my parents weren’t infallible and grownups did not necessarily know more about the world than I did. Watergate was empowering in a sense: It told you that the authority figures were flawed, perhaps deeply so, that you should not blindly trust the powerful. Bad men do bad things, and lie about them, and it is our challenge to scrape away that deceit and find the truth beneath.

Opinion, Column, National Commentary Read more Comments

This image provided by NASA shows astronaut Chris Hadfield recording the first music video from space Sunday May 12, 2013. The song was his cover version of David Bowie's Space Oddity. Hadfield and astronaut Thomas Marshburn are scheduled to return to earth Monday May 13, 2013. (AP Photo/NASA, Chris Hadfield)

Astronaut's space station music video is a hit

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 5:27pm

Houston, we have a superstar. He’s Chris Hadfield, who crawled out of a space capsule on the plains of Kazakhstan early Tuesday (late Monday EDT), dealing with gravity for the first time in five months and sudden global celebrity from singing a gone-viral made-in-space music video.

Astronaut, International Space Station, Video, International Read more Comments

This undated photo circulated by law enforcement and provided by NBC News, shows Adam Lanza. Authorities say Lanza killed his mother at their home and then opened fire inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, killing 26 people, including 20 children, before taking his own life, on Friday. (AP Photo/NBC News)

Newtown massacre remains inexplicable

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - 11:24am

NEWTOWN, CONN. - Slowly, amid rumor and misinformation, a picture of the killer is emerging, and it is dismayingly familiar. Adam Lanza was yet another young, withdrawn, middle-class male who for some unimaginable reason graduated from his adolescence as a mass murderer.

Guns, mass shooting, School shooting, National Read more Comments

This undated image made available by NASA and photographed by the Expedition 28 crew aboard the International Space Station, shows the moon, at center with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth's atmosphere. A team of former NASA executives are launching a private venture to send people to the moon for $1.5 billion. The newly formed business is offering countries a two-person trip to the moon, either for research or national prestige. The venture was announced Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/NASA)

Company formed to take passengers to the moon

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Friday, December 7, 2012 - 10:30am

WASHINGTON — It had to happen: A start-up company is offering rides to the moon. Book your seat now — though it’s going to set you back $750 million (it’s unclear if that includes baggage fees).

Business, Features, Private space program, NASA Read more Comments

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 1998 file photo, a couple enjoy lunch on one of the scenic points at Grand Canyon West on the Hualapai Indian reservation in Arizona. A new study published in the journal Science Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, suggests the western Grand Canyon formed 70 million years ago. Some scientists disagree and believe the canyon was mainly carved by the Colorado River in the past 5 to 6 million years. (AP Photo/Jeff Robbins, File)

Grand Canyon older than previously believed

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 5:35pm

To stand on the South Rim and gaze into the Grand Canyon is to behold an awesome immensity of time. The serpentine Colorado River has relentlessly incised a 280-mile-long chasm that in some places stretches 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep. Visitors to Grand Canyon National Park will encounter an exhibit titled the Trail of Time, and learn that scientists believe the canyon is about 6 million years old - relatively young by geological standards.

Features, Grand Canyon Read more Comments

Virginia highway is where Obama support ends and The South begins

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Saturday, September 29, 2012 - 8:27am

GORDONSVILLE, Va. - There’s debate about where the South really begins. The Mason-Dixon Line? The Potomac? The Rappahannock? The "sweet tea line?" What’s certain is that, by the time you’ve reached David Lamb’s horse farm in Orange County, Va., you’re there.

Politics, President Barack Obama, National Read more Comments

A new chapter in a violent American story

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 10:19am

The United States is a less violent country than it was two decades ago. The homicide rate, which hit a peak in the early 1990s at about 10 per 100,000 people, has been cut in half, to a level not seen since the early 1960s.

Opinion, Column, National Commentary Read more Comments

Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, center, leaves the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa., Wednesday, June 20, 2012. The defense has rested in Sandusky's child sexual abuse trial. Sandusky is charged with 51 counts of child sexual abuse involving 10 boys over a period of 15 years. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Jerry Sandusky doesn’t testify, defense rests

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post

Last updated Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 4:42pm

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Jerry Sandusky has chosen to remain silent.

After much anticipation that the former Penn State assistant football coach would directly address the child sex abuse charges against him, his lead attorney, Joe Amendola, faced Judge John Cleland at 11:46 a.m. ET Wednesday and said, "Your honor, at this time the defense rests."

Jerry Sandusky, National Read more Comments