The Supreme Court once again passed up a historic opportunity to finally put some limits on partisan gerrymandering. In a pair of cases from Wisconsin and Maryland, the court declined to take on the big question: When does gerrymandering, the drawing of districts to benefit the political party in control, go so far as to be illegal?

The result ...Read more

Vegetarian interlopers are carving out a growing foothold in the meat and dairy sections of America's grocery stores, and the conventional food industry is not happy about it. Fearing substitute products that increasingly look and taste like the real thing, the beef and dairy industries recently asked the federal government to protect their once...Read more

The Trump-produced horror show at the U.S. border represents the rock-bottom of American responses to the challenge of immigration -- a cruel and immoral abuse of children for midterm political gain by a cynical president -- but it comes at the end of a long, tortured road.

For 30 years, since President Ronald Reagan's offer of amnesty and a ...Read more

Without warning, she dropped her head and began to cry.

Jessica, whose young son played nearby at a South Los Angeles health clinic, put her hands over her face to cover her tears.

When I asked what was wrong, she told me her husband had been ordered by Guatemalan gangsters to pay a protection tax or every member of his family would be killed....Read more

After raising expectations that it would finally deal with the harm caused by partisan gerrymandering, the Supreme Court on Monday essentially said: "Never mind." It was an exasperating abdication of responsibility by the court, which should have used the cases before it to strike a blow against the time-dishonored practice of drawing ...Read more

As condemnations grow over President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy toward illegal border crossings, under which 2,000 children have been separated from their parents, President Trump on Monday morning took aim at ... Germany.

"The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin ...Read more

President Donald Trump's failure to understand that he represents all Americans, not just his strongest supporters, might explain why he has the lowest approval rating of any president at this point in a first term. And it might be the reason he has repeatedly attempted a bargaining gambit that failed each time.

The maneuvers he tried to pull ...Read more

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu M. Berle ruled in March that coffee should carry the warning labels mandated by California's Proposition 65 because the brew contains acrylamide, a chemical that some studies found increases the incidence of cancer in rats. It was an unfortunate outcome of a ridiculous lawsuit by an opportunistic attorney ...Read more

The World Health Organization has a lot on its plate these days. Ebola's made a comeback in central Africa. There are still parts of the world where polio has yet to be rubbed out. The agency is looking into the beginnings of a cholera outbreak in Cameroon, and continues the fight against malaria in parts of Latin America. Next up for the world'...Read more

Controversial and stepped-up law enforcement separating children from their parents suspected of illegally crossing the southwestern U.S. border is a broad example of what conservatives and liberals should be agreeing on: Zero tolerance policies don't work.

They don't work in schools. They don't work in the criminal justice system. They don't ...Read more

Chances are pretty good that you haven't felt the sting of President Donald Trump's punitive tariff policies. But you will.

The president announced late Monday that China had (unsurprisingly) refused to buckle in the face of his decision to slap tariffs on $50 billion worth of goods imported into the United States. Instead, China had retaliated...Read more

Is President Donald Trump on the path to destroying the international system the U.S. created after World War II?

Since Trump blew up the G-7 summit, launching a flurry of insults at America's closest allies on his way to flattering North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un, there has been no shortage of pessimists warning that this postwar system is ...Read more

Children in cages.

One day as a nation we'll look back in shame at our current immigration fiasco, the way we look back in shame at slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans, the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

One day adults will try to explain it to children and there will be no defense that makes moral sense.

Mom,...Read more

June 20 is World Refugee Day, designated annually by the United Nations to honor the "strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees" who are forced to flee their homelands. But this year, the international agency says the day has special significance as "a key moment for the public to show support for families forced to flee."

The ...Read more

Partisan gerrymandering has long exasperated the Supreme Court, as its June 18 ruling in the case known as Gill v Whitford attests.

The court found that the plaintiffs did not have sufficient standing to challenge Wisconsin's statewide district maps. The plaintiffs claimed the maps were drawn to minimize the political power of the opposition ...Read more

Due to hardline immigration policies the White House has engineered along the U.S. border with Mexico, at least 2,000 children have been forcibly separated from their parents and placed in makeshift detention centers – including tents and an abandoned Walmart store.

It's possible that many more than 2,000 kids have been dumped into this limbo...Read more

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday reached a shaky compromise with her Bavarian coalition partner that gives her two weeks to make a deal with other European Union leaders on reforms to the bloc's dysfunctional asylum system. It's a tall order, but President Donald Trump is wrong to suggest that the migration issue is about to take down Merkel's...Read more