Philly, all of this killing over dumb stuff has got to stop. A bump, a look, some words, and the next thing you know, someone pulls out a gun and starts shooting.

That's what happened with Dominique Oglesby, the 23-year-old Penn State student killed outside the Galaxy West Bar & Grill in West Philly in March. She reportedly accidentally bumped ...Read more

The case for high-skilled immigration to the U.S. isn't hard to make. All those Ph.D.s in science and technology help build the nation's advanced infrastructure while adding to the store of human capital and generating national wealth.

As a 2016 Congressional Research Service report stated, "This workforce is seen by many as a catalyst of U.S. ...Read more

Before launching his campaign for governor last year, Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) was a fairly ordinary legislator. Republican, but not in a rabble-rousing kind of way, and seemingly willing to work across the aisle to get things done. His first attention-getting legislation was a bill he co-authored in 2013 with a Democratic ...Read more

Welcome back, Sen. Grassley.

It's heartening to see the independent-minded Chuck Grassley of earlier times reappear to protect the special counsel's probe into collusion between the president's 2016 election campaign and Russia.

As head of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa's senior senator is refusing to cave to pressure from Mitch ...Read more

In the wake of an incident that drew unwelcome national attention, Starbucks will close its 8,000 U.S. stores for part of the day on May 29 to offer "implicit bias training" to its 175,000 workers.

On April 12, the manager of a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia called police to report that two men were "refusing to make a purchase or leave." ...Read more

The culture of disruption is getting out of hand.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Bitcoin evangelist Tim Draper has revived his proposal to carve our fabulous state into smaller parts. His current proposal, Cal 3, is a minor improvement over his 2014 scheme, which was to break the state into six parts.

But it's just as misguided.

Draper...Read more

The second felony charge against Gov. Eric Greitens -- the one for tampering with a computer -- isn't as explosive as the one for allegedly taking a photograph of his semi-nude hairdresser. But it could be easier to prove and could shed some much-needed light on how a political newcomer managed to raise so much cash so quickly for his 2016 ...Read more

Nicaragua suddenly exploded over the weekend with an outpouring of discontent with President/dictator Daniel Ortega. Thousands took to the streets, starting on Wednesday. By Sunday, the clashes with government forces had left as many as 30 dead, with casualties on both sides.

The street violence in Managua -- which began with university ...Read more

Why are politicians held in such low esteem by many Americans? Because too often their true intentions are masked to win favor with one constituency while seeming to favor another. Look at how Congress and the White House are mishandling the H-2B immigration program for migrant workers. It's a glowing example of two-faced politics.

Small ...Read more

Why are politicians held in such low esteem by many Americans? Because too often their true intentions are masked to win favor with one constituency while seeming to favor another. Look at how Congress and the White House are mishandling the H-2B immigration program for migrant workers. It's a glowing example of two-faced politics.

Small ...Read more

The attorney for Chevron Oil was attempting a classic bit of courtroom performance: Offer a stunning admission -- then make a protest of innocence.

"Chevron accepts the scientific consensus regarding climate change," Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., an attorney for the California-based oil giant, said last month at the Federal District Courthouse in ...Read more

Sweet, heady sorghum might not evoke the same images of Kansas agriculture as rippling rows of wheat or sunflowers. But the ancient plant, also known as milo, is an unsung backbone of the state's farm production, and the threat of a trade war in 2018 has already erased the four-year boom farmers had been enjoying

Kansas is the No. 1 grain ...Read more

David Chase, the creator of "The Sopranos," the long-running HBO series about the New Jersey mob, once explained to me the uncanny brilliance of the show.

"Everything that everybody says is untrue. Complete falsehoods, self-justifications, rationalizations, outright lies, fantasies and miscommunication," he said. "There's always sort of a joke ...Read more

For the past four years at Loyola University Maryland I have come to find lifelong friendships; amazing professors, who were instrumental in my being able to go to law school next year; and, by the grace of God, I was even able to find a date. I was also able to discover the reason why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

While ...Read more

Chicagoans tend to tolerate violent crime like a force of nature they can't tame. Calendar year accounting brings order to disparate events -- the city had this many killings, that many inches of rain. But while this city can't control cloud-borne precipitation, it can reduce the flow of blood, and of tears. Time and again Chicagoans have proven...Read more

Sweet, heady sorghum might not evoke the same images of Kansas agriculture as rippling rows of wheat or sunflowers. But the ancient plant, also known as milo, is an unsung backbone of the state's farm production, and the threat of a trade war in 2018 has already erased the four-year boom farmers had been enjoying

Kansas is the No. 1 grain ...Read more