Over 50 years ago, when I was a 14-month-old toddler, I was involuntarily separated from my parents. I was so young that I have no memories of those 11 days in a children's hospital. Deep down, however, I carry the ineradicable sadness of that experience to this day.

The part of that small child still inside me wants to bear witness. Despite ...Read more

For decades, we've known that suicide is contagious and that how we talk about it matters. Now, we're at least starting to see how crucial it is to honor the lives of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain without perseverating ghoulishly on how they died.

Though it's no easy thing, we've got to find a way to destigmatize without normalizing and to ...Read more

Presidents -- normal presidents -- care deeply about their professional reputations. Donald Trump showed again this week that he's different, and it's quite possible it was costly to him on policies he seems to care about.

I'm not really talking here about the communications fiasco surrounding the administration's family separation policy. A ...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to allow states to impose sales taxes on online purchases by their residents is a triumph of common sense.

Factions didn't break along the usual ideological divide. It was striking to see both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas -- arguably the court's most liberal and conservative members, respectively...Read more

While the world debates the meaning of first lady Melania Trump's "I really don't care, do u?" jacket, Chicago writer Parker Molloy is seizing on the uproar to raise money for groups that help immigrant families detained at the southern border.

"Since Melania Trump's jacket said 'I really don't care' ... I set up http://ireallydocare.com," ...Read more

One of the greatest public health triumphs of the last century impressively still gains momentum: Millions of Americans have quit smoking -- and more will follow.

Smoking among adults hit a record low in 2017 -- to about 14 percent from nearly 16 percent a year earlier. The smoking rate has dropped for so long that we've come to expect it every...Read more

It was a lie all along.

For over a month, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the law required him to separate children from parents arrested at the border. He said that Democrats were to blame.

But there was no such law. On Wednesday, facing national outcry, Trump issued an executive order to keep the families together. It was a tacit...Read more

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led the short-lived national embarrassment that was President Donald Trump's Commission on Election Integrity, suffered his own dual major embarrassment this week: A federal judge threw out a 2013 Kansas law championed by Kobach that requires voters to prove citizenship before casting a ballot. Judge ...Read more

Buying stuff online is an easy option that sometimes comes with an extra discount: no sales tax. That unfair advantage for web retailers was called out Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court in a decision that should help level the playing field between bricks-and-mortar and internet-based sellers.

If you enjoyed the illicit thrill of avoiding the ...Read more

The Supreme Court struck an important blow for fairness Thursday when it ruled that a state could require online retailers to collect sales taxes even if they had no offices or employees within its borders. But before you can understand what the ruling did, you have to understand what it did not do.

The divided court's opinion in South Dakota ...Read more

Dry-sounding studies based on academics sifting through U.S. health statistics may not sound like headline news. But that's not the case for a new study released by the Applied Population Lab. Researchers found that in more than half of the 50 states, more whites died than were born in 2016.

This finding has at least three huge takeaways.

The ...Read more

VENICE, Italy -- In 1962, two men from East Berlin attempted a daring escape to the West. Peter Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik were young -- all of 18. On Aug. 17, the pair slipped away from their construction jobs during their lunch break and made their way to the border, hiding in an old factory near the Checkpoint Charlie crossing of the Berlin ...Read more

Walter Mondale has some advice for his fellow Democrats: Focus all your energy on this fall's congressional contests, not the 2020 presidential race, because if you don't retake the House of Representatives first, you'll probably be dead two years later.

"The November elections are fateful," the former vice president and U.S. senator said when ...Read more

Before your child goes into a friend's house this summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants you to ask whether any unlocked guns are present.

The group of 66,000 pediatric specialists designated Thursday as ASK (Asking Saves Kids) Day, in an attempt to curb gun injuries and deaths, which happen at an alarming rate in the United States. ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Earlier this week, a producer from a local television station called to inquire if I would like to come on and defend the separation of parents and children at the border. I politely replied, "No, thank you."

I couldn't figure out how, after everything that I had written on the topic, they could ask me to publicly advocate for a...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The heart-rending sound of children crying for their mothers and the disturbing sight of little kids confined in wire cages are more powerful than any president.

No national policy is worth ripping weeping toddlers from their parents' arms and placing them in custody, and most people instinctively understand that -- even ...Read more

The Trump administration, shamed by the national outcry over separating children from their asylum-seeking parents at the border, has capitulated. The president Wednesday signed an executive order to end that brutal practice -- and instead could imprison children alongside their parents indefinitely.

The question Americans need to ask ...Read more

Californians will vote this fall on a radical proposal to split the state into three: Northern California, Southern California and just plain California.

The plan obviously raises a myriad of policy issues. But anyone inclined to vote for the initiative should be particularly concerned with the implications for the state's most critical ...Read more

If it wasn't so serious, this stuff would be laughable.

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is up to his neck in ethics investigations and has been criticized even by some Republicans (though they don't seem too upset) over his, shall we say, profligate ways.

Now the Intercept reports, based on records released under...Read more