Growing up, we had a big, bad orange cat named Min. He was the tough guy in the neighborhood. Despite being well-loved, zealously fed and fully neutered, Min's hobby was bullying other people's nicer pets.

When the weather was good, Min would camp out all night under the hydrangea next to the front stoop just to keep an eye on things. We ...Read more

If you were born in the South, you will always be a Southerner.

The way you speak. The values you carry with you. The way you view relationships between the sexes and the races all are a part of your genetic core.

Though your views might evolve over time, there is no getting away from the fact that the mores of the Deep South helped to create ...Read more

President Donald Trump had convinced himself earlier this month that he was en route to a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. That mirage has already dissipated.

On Thursday, the president announced he was cancelling his planned June 12 summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, blaming the North Korean leader's "tremendous...Read more

The Gaza Strip, where more than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers during mass protests in recent weeks, is a dense and dismal sliver of land along the Mediterranean Coast between Egypt and Israel. More than 2 million people are packed tightly into a space the size of Portland, Ore. More than 40 percent of the population is ...Read more

The owners of the 32 National Football League teams sent a wrongheaded and, frankly, un-American message to their players Wednesday: Expressing your opinion during the national anthem is no longer permitted.

"A club will be fined by the League if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem," the ...Read more

Today, fellow spymasters, we must briefly interrupt our fascination with President Donald Trump's latest Twitter binge of victimization – his weeklong claims that he and his presidential campaign were innocent victims of a scandalous FBI spy caper.

To help us evaluate our president's self-pitying tweet week, we're going to play our first-ever...Read more

Chances are, you're one of the 90 percent of Americans who have bigger paychecks due to the tax reform that Congress passed last year. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) cut taxes for individual Americans, lowered businesses taxes and made investment in the United States more attractive, which will combine to increase incomes even more. Last year,...Read more

One more primary night, and once again the results fell into a pretty firm pattern.

Democratic women are doing extremely well. The highlights Tuesday were Stacey Abrams, nominated for governor in Georgia; Lupe Valdez, nominated for governor in Texas; and Amy McGrath, who won her U.S. House nomination in Kentucky.

Republican women? Not so much....Read more

Smartphones are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. But their capabilities would have staggered the imaginations of people who lived just a few decades ago. The wealth of information they offer to users is matched by the immense trove of information they compile about users -- where they went, whom they called or texted, what websites ...Read more

New research from the University of Washington shows gun owners in this state must do a much better job of securing their weapons at home.

The research based on telephone health surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found just over a third of Washington gun owners reported their weapons were locked properly and ...Read more

Excessive force by police officers is a national problem, but the solution will need to come from state and local governments. The federal courts and federal government are showing themselves unwilling to deal with the problem, but meaningful action at the state and local levels is possible and, indeed, essential.

On March 18, Stephon Clark was...Read more

Since John G. Roberts Jr. became chief justice in 2005, the Supreme Court has repeatedly issued rulings favoring corporate rights over those of individuals. Monday saw another such ruling.

In a 5-4 decision written by first-term Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court ruled that workers can't band together to challenge labor arbitration agreements ...Read more

Quiet. Hear that? Not if you're listening for the sound of gun laws being changed so children will not be shot to death in America's schools.

School massacres have become so frequent that there was a noticeable absence of the strong reactions expected after 10 students and adults were killed by a 17-year-old shooter last week in Santa Fe, Texas...Read more

In the wake of two appalling scandals that have badly marred the reputation of the University of Southern California, it is time for President C.L. Max Nikias to step aside or be ousted.

Almost a year after the shocking revelation that the dean of the medical school was doing drugs and partying with young criminals and addicts -- and a week ...Read more

On the morning that Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, Lesle Honore sat in bed in front of her TV on Chicago's South Side, 4,000 miles from the royal spectacle at Windsor Castle, and wrote a poem on her phone.

It was inspired by the sight of Markle and her mother, Doria Ragland, dressed in wedding finery and riding together in a Rolls-Royce.

...Read more

It's high school graduation season, which means seniors are making big plans, like what their great Instagram hashtags will be and how they'll sneak in vape puffs during the commencement ceremony. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Sacramento are debating Assembly Bill 2772, which would mandate that all high schoolers complete at least one course in ethnic...Read more

Watching the current eruptions and flowing lava in Hawaii is strangely similar to observing the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.

In both cases, the situations are fiery, unpredictable and very, very dangerous. And both seem to be moving in slow motion, but manage to convey a sense of a true disaster looming ahead.

Over the past weekend, incumbent ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. -- Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been at the forefront of trying to roll back the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in schools that receive public funds.

Known as Title IX of the Federal Education Act, the law includes a "preponderance of evidence" clause that allows colleges and universities to convene ...Read more