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

Do you think life would be easier if you were stupider? Or put it this way: If you could take a pill that'd make you uninterruptedly happy, do you think it would automatically make you dumber?

At 61, if my insurance carrier covered it, I'm not sure I wouldn't sign up for that prescription. It's not that I think I'm so smart, either: I still ...Read more

FORT WORTH, Texas -- It's a truth universally acknowledged that children need their parents -- to thrive, feel secure, and know who they are.

Which is why the Trump administration's now rescinded policy to separate and detain children and parents illegally crossing the southern border has been especially cruel.

While it was crudely defended by...Read more

The nation should be thankful that President Donald Trump finally came to his senses and ended the inhumane and traumatizing practice of separating children from their immigrant parents who illegally enter the United States. Facing an extraordinary backlash not just from Democrats but from some Republicans, every living former first lady (and, ...Read more

A quick pop quiz: The University of Chicago surprised the education world when it decided to A) no longer require applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores; B) move to Indiana; C) stop admitting students from Canada; or D) issue each student a comfort pet.

Did you choose A? Good.

In an effort to lower barriers to admission, U. of C. has become ...Read more

President Donald Trump did the right thing Wednesday by reversing course to address an immigration crisis. He issued an executive order to end his administration's inhumane practice of separating children from their parents at the southern border.

Nearly 2,000 children had been sent alone to shelters because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' ...Read more

Since Illinois began issuing permits to carry concealed firearms in 2014, state government has generated considerable evidence of how its 265,000 permit holders use their weapons. There have been dozens of shootings by licensees. At least 11 people have been killed.

These episodes might confirm the value of armed citizens in stopping violent ...Read more

It is time for America to address its own humanitarian crisis.

With more than 12,000 children being held in detention camps, our nation can no longer claim the moral high ground when it comes to refugee children.

We gave up our perch the moment we began locking up children who arrived at our doorstep fleeing violence and crime in Central ...Read more

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump is an immoral, cruel man who is now the face of America.

When horrified Americans realized Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy meant separating migrant parents and their children, they chorused, "This is not who we are." Really?

Just as Trump alone can decide to praise North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who ...Read more

Reports of young children ripped from their parents' arms at the U.S.-Mexico border are causing outrage, and rightly so. But this shocking practice is just the latest example of the Trump administration's systematic assault on bonds of love and kinship that American immigration law has long valued and protected.

"Family separation" is a tactic ...Read more

Government officials who call the cops at public meetings to silence their critics can be held accountable -- even if an arrest might be justified on other grounds. That was the reassuring conclusion of a ruling by the Supreme Court this week.

Monday's 8-1 decision was a victory for Fane Lozman, the owner of a houseboat he kept at a marina ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Justice's decision to break with its duty to defend United States law and join in an ideological effort to continue dismantling the Affordable Care Act is simply wrong.

The legal argument calling the ACA unconstitutional is weak, the politics are tone-deaf and the results would take us back to the days when ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The constitutionality of Obamacare is an issue again.

Six years ago, a closely divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld the statute in NFIB v. Sebelius, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had an important effect -- whether or not intended -- on Obamacare's constitutionality.

Obamacare requires insurance companies to cover pre-...Read more

How ironic that the White House chose to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday just as President Trump was manipulating the suffering of migrant children for his own political ends.

The Trump team quit the council on account of that body's fixation with Israel and inclusion of member states with wretched human rights ...Read more

Democracy's decline and fall seems aided, abetted and hastened when democracy's watchdogs fail to bark.

And sometimes they include my former colleagues in the White House press corps. Often, when President Donald Trump and his spokespeople persist in making claims that are flat-out false, our journalistic watchdogs don't seem to be up to the ...Read more

With the World Cup underway in Russia, the host country is naturally enjoying a lot of international attention. Conspicuously absent from that coverage, however, are Moscow's many transgressions since it won the bid in 2010 to host. The Russia of 2018 probably wouldn't even get the chance.

Russia won the bid on June 8, 2010, three days before ...Read more