If you had any doubt that Republican objections to judicial activism would melt away if conservative judges gained the upper hand, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and some of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in Texas, should put it to rest.

The two relevant data points are the leaked draft of an opinion by Alito...Read more

My reaction to news of the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, was more than emotional; my heart raced and my stomach churned. My hands are shaking as I write this nearly a week later.

My first thought, in the moment after I heard about the attack, was the same as it always is after every mass shooting: Dear God, please don't let the shooter be...Read more

When the sudden COVID-19 shutdown caused people to hoard toilet paper, the nation was half amused by the inability to find a roll on any retail shelf.

There’s nothing funny, though, about the baby-formula shortage that has reached a peak in recent weeks. Many babies need formula to survive and thrive. It contains all the nutrients, in the ...Read more

Talk about a sad coincidence.

On Saturday I spent the afternoon with a book on the history of the 2nd Amendment, then turned on cable news: While I'd been reading, millions of Americans were grocery-shopping; in Buffalo, New York, 10 of them, all Black people, were massacred, allegedly by an 18-year-old white supremacist with an assault rifle. ...Read more

Startup Bobbie introduced its infant formula product in January 2021, the first new brand to be approved for sale in nearly a decade. It was a small operator representing a tiny fraction of the $4 billion U.S. formula market, but when shortages began roiling the industry in recent months, Bobbie offered at least one more option for rattled ...Read more

Riding high after killing off President Biden's nomination of a pro-labor regulator for a key post at the Department of Labor, big business has been sharpening its knives for a noted consumer advocate nominated to join the Federal Communications Commission.

The target this time is Gigi Sohn, whose credentials as a critic of the monopoly power ...Read more

In my heart of hearts, I don't believe newly minted Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano has a snowball's chance in a burning hell of being elected Pennsylvania's next governor.

Simply put: State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R- Franklin, is a theocrat, and an unapologetic one at that.

According to the New Oxford Dictionary, a theocrat...Read more

Now that Ukraine has evacuated its fighters from Mariupol, ceding control of the city to Russian forces, we can begin to sort the consequences. One has so far gone largely unexplored — the effect on the production of noble gases.

Azovstal, the besieged steel plant in Mariupol, is one of only a handful of facilities in the world capable of ...Read more

Who benefits from President Joe Biden’s sudden U.S. opening to repressive communist Cuba? Not American democracy — and not Florida, where the move almost feels like a betrayal by Biden and his administration.

The president, who lost Florida to Donald Trump, underestimates the stakes.

The political calculus is that Biden didn’t have those...Read more

On Feb. 24, when Putin (like other would-be conquerors we’ll be mentioning today, he only needs one name) invaded Ukraine, the Russian despot wanted to change history. That he did: Rather than divide and weaken NATO, he united and strengthened the Atlantic Alliance that has kept the peace in its part of Europe since 1949.

Now NATO is growing,...Read more

On Feb. 24, when Putin (like other would-be conquerors we’ll be mentioning today, he only needs one name) invaded Ukraine, the Russian despot wanted to change history. That he did: Rather than divide and weaken NATO, he united and strengthened the Atlantic Alliance that has kept the peace in its part of Europe since 1949.

Now NATO is growing,...Read more

There is something that has been sorely missing in the United States in the last decade — soaring rhetoric. We are lacking leaders who, like Abraham Lincoln, appeal to our better angels through their ability to craft rhetoric that resonates in people’s hearts and minds.

Rhetoric appeals to people’s emotions and logic to persuade, motivate...Read more

Most of the focus during midterm primary season has been on the Republicans. Rightly so; after all, not only are there important internal fights playing out in GOP nomination battles, but the outcome could determine the fate of U.S. democracy. It’s a huge story that Pennsylvania Republicans have chosen a candidate for governor who appears ...Read more

There is no DNA for bigotry. Hatred is acquired after birth. So what explains mass murders like the one at a Buffalo supermarket, where 10 people were slain by a radicalized youth who drove 200 miles with a semi-automatic rifle to find a concentration of Black victims?

Racism is an entirely man-made virus. The lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II ...Read more

Tuesday's visit to the local polling place looked refreshingly typical to me — the standard primary election math was in play (more poll workers than voters), the mode for hair color was white, and the earnest candidate advocates out front reminded me still again of that old Mitch Hedberg joke about people passing out flyers:

"What they're ...Read more

In March, a Boeing 737-800 cruising straight and level on a routine domestic flight suddenly nose-dived into a hillside, killing all 132 aboard.

A full report on the cause of that China Eastern Airlines crash is probably months away, but with no other explanations, suspicion has landed on the pilots. The Wall Street Journal reported this week ...Read more

Not long ago, Republicans in the Missouri Legislature were citing the need to protect patient privacy as the justification for blocking a statewide prescription drug database to address opioid addiction. Pro-privacy Republicans are suddenly in short supply now that patients’ rights are under direct attack in the abortion debate.

The abortion ...Read more

They don’t try to communicate, and they don’t respond when we try to communicate with them. They speed away if we get too close. They move faster than anything known in this world and violate the laws of physics. At least 11 times, they’ve nearly collided with American military aircraft. And we have no idea what UFOs, now known as ...Read more

Why not leave abortion to the states?

One of the most common arguments made by those who want to downplay the significance of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health is that it would not make abortion illegal. Rather, it would merely return the abortion debate to the legislative ...Read more

Without adequate justification, Florida officials have made a poorly timed decision to pull out of a wide-ranging national survey measuring health and behavior risks among the state’s teenagers. The survey polls high school students anonymously on topics including diet, smoking, alcohol use, sexual behavior and mental health. Florida officials...Read more