LOS ANGELES – After a police officer murdered George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement took wing across America, many of us learned, for the first time, that one key model for contemporary police departments was the slave patrols of the antebellum South.

After the Civil War, former slave states passed "black codes," laws that ...Read more

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval last week of Biogen Inc.’s Alzheimer's treatment aducanumab was a mistake based on weak evidence. The question now is just how much the U.S. will spend on a drug that may not help patients. No one but Biogen will like the answer.

Biogen priced its drug at about $56,000 a year, which is ...Read more

President Joe Biden’s decision to donate 500 million COVID-19 vaccines to other countries by June 2022 is an important step toward restoring the United States’ global standing. Another, parallel foreign policy solution could perhaps do even more. It is simple, cost-effective and could improve the health and well-being of billions of people �...Read more

At last, Harvey Weinstein, the onetime Hollywood power broker who was convicted of sexual assault in New York, will face the court trial in Los Angeles he has tried to evade for months.

The breadth of Weinstein’s revolting sexual predation — first revealed in 2017 by The New York Times and The New Yorker — is so staggering that he was ...Read more

It’s 2021, the pandemic is ongoing, although more and more people are now totally vaccinated. Many people are still flocking to the internet and social media in search of connection.

For some, it is an oasis. For others, a nightmare.

Woke folks are aware of #StopAsianHate, #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. These are hashtags meant to draw ...Read more

Over the past 20 years, China has absorbed millions of U.S. jobs. It has stolen billions of dollars' worth of intellectual property from American companies and made itself critical to global supply chains, at times with the help of U.S. investors.

This must stop. The Chinese regime is an authoritarian, powerful, anti-democratic superpower that ...Read more

In one short tweet Tuesday, Florida's senior senator, Marco Rubio, managed to dismiss the idea that racial and social inequities exist in health care in this country.

And he did it during a pandemic that has disproportionately harmed minorities. Talk about tone deaf — and hurtful.

"The American Medical Association has fallen victim to the ...Read more

The Group of Seven, known as G-7, is an association that includes nations with some of the world's most advanced economies: Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States. Last week, in response to President Joe Biden's announcement that the U.S. would provide 500 million COVID-19 vaccinations to poor countries around...Read more

In the Persian puppet theater known as Shah Selim Bazi, tragicomic tales of court intrigue gave audiences a glimpse into the mind of their ruler and the workings of his administration. Behind the screen, the strings were pulled by the “morshed,” or spiritual leader, who also served as narrator. This allowed him to manipulate not only the ...Read more

There is a familiar pattern of responses to the Israeli-Palestinian problem that mirrors most political problems. There are two positions that are diametrically opposed to each other, and then there is a middle position that is characterized as a moderate or centrist position. The two positions that stand in direct opposition are complete ...Read more

This weekend, Americans will celebrate an unofficial holiday that many people had not heard of a year ago.

In this era of purposeful racial awareness, Juneteenth is the new “it” holiday for the socially woke.

While many African Americans have celebrated it for decades, the effort to make June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the end of ...Read more

All sorts of information is now spilling out about how former president Donald Trump’s Department of Justice sought to investigate leaks related to the Russia investigation. Under Trump, the department subpoenaed the confidential data of journalists and, apparently, the White House counsel. Both of these are chilling, but arguably the worst ...Read more

More than two years ago, Gary Martin walked into a disciplinary meeting with his supervisors at an Aurora, Illinois, valve manufacturing plant. They told him he was being let go. “Yeah, it’s over,” a survivor remembered him saying. Martin pulled out a .40-caliber handgun and killed four of the people in the room. He killed another co-...Read more

For millions of years, Earth’s climate has been fairly stable largely due to the ocean’s role in mediating global temperature and driving our weather cycles, determining rainfall, storms, droughts and floods. Without much attention or support from humans, the ocean has been protecting every living being on this planet from the harmful ...Read more

Too many people across the country are left behind because they don't have reliable, affordable access to the internet. But a bipartisan push to close this digital divide would be $1 billion well spent.

The Digital Equity Act, reintroduced last week by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, would offer financial assistance to help states and community ...Read more

ATLANTA — Marjorie Taylor Greene has been called on to apologize many times before.

For promoting the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory; for harassing a school shooting victim; for statements so racist, anti-Semitic and offensive that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier called her "looney lies" a "cancer" on the GOP.

In the past, ...Read more

Last December, Oregon lawmaker Mike Nearman was meeting with activists unhappy with the state's pandemic lockdown. He shared their sentiments and thought he'd do something to show solidarity. So he presented them with a scenario.

Supposing, Nearman told them, someone was hoping to breach the state Capitol, which has been closed to the public ...Read more

On the eve of President Joe Biden’s summit with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president once again reminded the world why most Western leaders don’t trust a word he says. In an interview with NBC, Putin deployed his familiar arsenal of lies and counteraccusations. The attempted murder of opposition leader Alexei Navalny? Not me. Election ...Read more

Let it not be lost on Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics that Israel’s just-ousted prime minister leaves behind a thriving economy, with a tech sector envied by the world; per capita GDP grew 60% between the start of Netanyahu’s term in March 2009 and 2020, with unemployment dropping to 3.4% before the coronavirus pandemic arrived. Nor can ...Read more