IT IS ONLY BY THINKING of Walker Percy that I can begin to make sense of what has befallen the city by which I live, where my wife and our four children were born, and that I have come to call home. Percy, the celebrated author of six novels, lived in Covington, Louisiana, just north of Lake…

BEHIND AL GORE'S unprecedented challenge to George W. Bush's slim but certified majority of electors is the vice president's claim to the moral and political high ground based on having won the popular vote. For now, the recount in Florida is at issue, but soon the fight may move to the Electoral…