As a journalist, I am not a big fan of aggressive, retaliatory investigations into leaks to the media.

Yes, government has the right to keep and protect certain secrets, but the public has a right to information too, and reporters often rely on unauthorized leaks of newsworthy stories. Not all of those leaks involve classified material or ...Read more

A soul-crushing sight met PETA fieldworkers one frigid February day: Minnie, a black pit bull who had spent her short, miserable life chained outside, was dead. Her bone-thin body was still tethered to a tree when they found her. Five other dogs on the property were chained, penned or both, like prisoners, but they were still alive, barely. All ...Read more

The federal government’s child tax credit just had its 25th anniversary, but not everyone is celebrating. Some conservatives think it’s a runaway entitlement program. A few on the left would rather redirect the money elsewhere. Advocates, meanwhile, want to expand it — but don’t agree on how.

The critics are mostly wrong. But its ...Read more

Anyone with a beating heart and sliver of humanity reacted to the October attack on Paul Pelosi in similar fashion, with a combination of shock and horror that transcended politics.

Not Harmeet Dhillon.

The Republican national committeewoman from California leapt onto Twitter to spin conspiratorial speculation about the dark-of-night invasion ...Read more

The Food and Drug Administration is on the cusp of changing rules so that more gay and bisexual men can donate blood like anyone else. It’s about time.

Rules in place since 2015, which replaced a longstanding outright ban imposed in the 1980s to frustrate the spread of HIV during the AIDS epidemic, made all gay and bisexual men abstain from ...Read more

It’s an unfortunate thing that the fiery collapse of the crypto exchange FTX is giving many people their first look at one of the most promising charitable movements of the last decade. It’s called effective altruism, or EA, and in recent years, disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, has arguably been the most famous — or ...Read more

Global warming was supposed to wreak havoc on polar bears. Looks like someone forgot to tell the polar bears.

Polar bears “are the poster child for the impacts of climate change on species, and justifiably so,” the World Wildlife Foundation proclaims on its website. Pictures of polar bears on melting islands of ice are supposed to provide a...Read more

Cohabiting before marriage is becoming more common, with the number of unmarried partners living together in the U.S. nearly tripling from 1996 to 2017. That was before potential isolation during a pandemic followed by wild inflation and skyrocketing rent made it even more practical to move in with a partner prior to saying “I do.”

The ...Read more

In the spring of 2019, when Joe Biden was just a battle-scarred former vice president, Barack Obama greeted his newly announced presidential campaign by praising his own selection of Biden as “one of the best decisions he ever made.” But he stopped conspicuously short of endorsing his old running mate.

Biden quickly offered a credulity-...Read more

As a recession looms on the horizon, many people understandably are worried about their finances and job security. While these concerns are not unfounded, constant worry and stress about things that might go wrong take a toll on a person’s mental and physical well-being.

That was the situation my patient M. found herself in when she came to ...Read more

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that threatens to open the door widely to businesses being allowed to violate anti-discrimination laws. If the court rules that the First Amendment protects the right of business owners to discriminate — based on claims of freedom of speech or free exercise of religion — civil ...Read more

When we want to describe a world that is chaotic and dangerous, few metaphors are more apt than “jungle.” We say, “It’s a jungle out there.”

Robert Kagan puts the term to good use in his 2018 book “The Jungle Grows Back.” He argues that the “liberal world order” that we have come to regard as inevitable is actually a mythical ...Read more

After more than a decade of U.S. policy focused on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, arms negotiations have been shoved off center stage.

The long-running dispute over nuclear weapons has been displaced by a more immediate drama — the rapidly spreading uprising against the Iranian regime.

"Our focus every day, and the world's ...Read more

Back in 2001, precious few Americans could have explained what Houston-based Enron did as a company and how it got so spectacularly wealthy. But when it filed for a record-breaking bankruptcy, Americans got schooled fast about not putting their trust and money behind swaggering, fast-talking con artists. But fools and their money regrouped over ...Read more

It’s been a busy few days for sentient scumbucket Alex Jones. Thursday, he hosted a certain rapper turned antisemitic ranter, squirming a little as his brother in hate praised Hitler and Nazis. Friday, Jones — who’s been morally bankrupt for decades — filed for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy, a transparent attempt to make it harder for ...Read more

Even as advocates claim that New York will be abrogating the rights of mentally ill people, we strongly support Mayor Eric Adams’ push to more proactively assess unstable individuals who are living on the streets — and provide needed treatment to those who are indeed in the throes of crippling psychological conditions and risk harming ...Read more

FORT WORTH. Texas — I spent the better part of a recent Saturday morning locked in an intense text-message debate with a dear friend.

The topic was Donald Trump’s recent decision to run for re-election.

And the interaction was probably not unique among conservative friend groups these past several weeks — for that matter, the last ...Read more

On Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in what is considered a groundbreaking moment for rights around the world. It recognized that everyone has the same basic inalienable rights, regardless of national origin, language, race, religion or sex.

It isn’t legally binding but serves as a goal for ...Read more

In the 2018 midterm elections, 50% of eligible U.S. citizens turned out to vote. Because Americans are always less inclined to show up at the polls in years when the presidency isn’t on the ballot, half of the nation feeling sufficiently motivated to vote was a remarkable event. Heading into this year, the question among political scientists ...Read more