APPLE HAS BROUGHT American consumers such popular wonders as the iPad, iPod and iPhone and earned billions of dollars in the process. It’s in hot water with Congress now, however, because of something it has not done: regularly paid the top U.S. corporate income tax rate of 35 percent on every dollar it earns around the world. From 2009 to 2012, in fact, Apple managed to avoid taxes on nearly a third of its worldwide net profits, some $30 billion, which were booked to its Irish subsidiaries, according to a report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Apple’s actions “undermine the fairness of the U.S. tax code,” the report says.

ONE OF THE FIRST things D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) did after taking over the newly constituted education committee was host a dinner aimed at establishing a new tone of collaboration for those involved in D.C. public education. The dinner was held on a night when D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson had long been scheduled to be out of town. That was an early tip-off to Mr. Catania’s notions about cooperation.

NOT MANY DICTATORS or military juntas willingly give up power. Will Burma’s regime prove the exception? That was the ever-present though mostly unspoken question as President Thein Sein toured Washington this week.