When Dos Rios Ranch opens to visitors next month in the San Joaquin Valley, California will have 280 state parks — making it one of the nation’s largest systems, as well as one of its most popular, with about 70 million visitors a year.

Who knew?

The short answer is: hardly anyone.

Over the past 20 years I’ve asked several thousand ...Read more

Last weekend as a parent, and 36 years ago as a student, I went to Michigan Stadium to be among tens of thousands for the annual graduation ceremony of the University of Michigan.

On Saturday morning, I walked with my wife and daughter — and 87-year-old Grandma Nora — the mile from campus to the Big House, waited in a long security line and...Read more

As a proud member of the Vietnamese American community and the California Assembly, I was deeply disappointed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ designation of April 30 as “Jane Fonda Day." This decision on a day that holds sacred significance for much of the Vietnamese community was insensitive and hurtful.

April 30 is widely ...Read more

How do you conduct a nonpartisan discussion about the integrity of election administration when one party is waging war on democratic legitimacy and the other party seeks to uphold it?

If the event I attended in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday night is any indication, you do it by never uttering the words “Democrat” or “Republican,�...Read more

President Joe Biden’s craven effort to appease radical progressives on Israel will fail — yet it will potentially damage American foreign policy interests for years to come. It’s also a deep stain on this administration.

Seven months after Biden proclaimed that the United States “stands with Israel” in its actions following the brutal...Read more

A poll published by the Economist this month included a finding that was striking yet unsurprising: Almost 7 in 10 Americans believe things in the country have spun out of control.

That's a problem for President Joe Biden, who campaigned in 2020 offering a return to normalcy after four years of chaos under Donald Trump.

Biden promised, in ...Read more

A normally low-key nonpartisan election for the Georgia Supreme Court has turned into a fierce political fight over abortion in an important battleground state.

The race is playing out between incumbent Justice Andrew Pinson, a rookie judge who once clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and political veteran and former ...Read more

In psychology, there is a phenomenon we refer to as “psychic numbing.” It occurs during times of staggering catastrophe, when it seems however we try, we cannot prevent a tragedy. Indifference and defeat set in. Systems of oppression rely enormously upon this kind of detachment, banking on the burnout of dissenters.

The utter devastation of...Read more

Can U.S. Sen. Rick Scott “out-Hispanic” a Latina candidate in his November reelection bid?

He might. The wealthy former Florida governor has proven he’s capable of dumping as much of his own money as he needs to win elections by razor-thin margins. Ahead of the 2024 elections, he may have another weapon: Hispanic voters, the Herald ...Read more

Young people from California to Alabama are under threat due to a growing number of policies mandating that school staff — and in some cases, any government employee — disclose to their parents if a student identifies as transgender. This movement for so-called “parental rights” disregards basic civil rights and puts trans youth in ...Read more

As so many commencement addresses haven’t been delivered this year, I thought I would share what I would have said to graduates if I had been invited by a college or university to be a speaker.

The first thing to know is that you are graduating at a propitious time in human history — for example, think of how artificial intelligence is ...Read more

Last week, Apple released the worst advertisement in its long and previously illustrious history of brand creation, extension and promotion. Why? The ad stupidly and arrogantly says the quiet part out loud. It does not so much sell an iPad as evoke discomfort at just what artificial intelligence might do to all of us sentient beings.

In two ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Here's a novel idea: Don't spend money until you've got it. What a concept!

Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed that as a way to head off future crippling state budget deficits. They've become all too common as Sacramento politicians muddle through cycles of economic booms and busts.

State budgeting in California is a constant ...Read more

As the ax came down on Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, it was Democrats who were there to block it, with the caucus uniting with the majority of GOP members to defeat Marjorie Taylor Greene’s effort to remove the speaker. It wasn’t just an act of goodwill — this was in exchange for Johnson’s successful efforts to help...Read more

While TV news was glued last week to Stormy Daniels' tell-all testimony and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, scant attention was paid to Vladimir Putin's tsar-like coronation for a fifth term. Nor to his bellicose parade of Russia's nuclear-capable missiles through Red Square on Thursday, the annual Victory Day commemoration of World War II.

I ...Read more

Last week, after Stormy Daniels spent nearly eight hours over two days testifying in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial in New York, the time seemed right to crack open her memoir, "Full Disclosure."

I had missed the book when it was published in 2018, but now that she has been a star witness in the first criminal trial of an ...Read more

When Donald Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles tried to discredit the adult film actor Stormy Daniels on the stand during Trump’s hush money trial, she took this absurd position: Assume a sex worker has no integrity.

“You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real?” Necheles asked.

“Wow,” Daniels said. �...Read more

Here they go again.

Six months before election day, for the third straight presidential contest, Donald Trump and his Republican lickspittles are sounding alarms about virtually nonexistent voting fraud, laying the groundwork to claim that he wuz robbed should he lose to President Biden.

Trump has refused in recent interviews to commit to ...Read more

Young people overseas are paying close attention to American politics, and they are concerned — not only about us but about the impact on them as well.

We are a bipartisan group of former members of Congress, having just left office last year, and we traveled together to Germany where we met with university and high school students in Hamburg...Read more

There are several ways the oldest president in America’s history could diffuse the sticky issue of his age as he seeks a second term.

He could embrace it with humor, à la Ronald Reagan’s quip at Walter Mondale during the 1984 presidential debate (“I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience�...Read more