A U.S. appeals court is considering a lawsuit filed by death-row inmates in Mississippi who subpoenaed the Missouri Department of Corrections to find out who provides the drugs in the state’s execution cocktail. The supplying pharmacy, claiming a First Amendment free-speech right, says it should be allowed to remain anonymous.
Crafting stories to serve political purposes is as old as politics itself. But the problem seems to be getting worse. Politicians and journalists alike feel compelled to make facts serve some larger tale in every utterance.
At Monday night’s debate, Donald Trump was self-absorbed, prickly, defensive, interrupting, baited by every charge yet unprepared to refute them. He was horribly out of his depth, incapable of stringing together a coherent three-sentence case.
Do the ages of Hillary Clinton (68) and Donald Trump (70) really matter? Probably not, aging experts say. But a new study suggests that only one of them should be considered elderly.
Shaming corporate CEOs before congressional committees tends to reassure the public that Congress is taking action. But Congress is doing nothing to prevent the wrongdoing from recurring. Republicans may rage at the CEOs who appear before them, but they haven’t given the Justice Department enough funding to pursue criminal charges against corporations and executives who violate the law. They haven’t even appropriated enough money for regulatory agencies to police the market.
Hillary Clinton seemed positively perky at Monday night’s debate, at least in comparison to Donald Trump and his case of the sniffles. But what was sick were the weak answers he kept spewing.
History is often a volley between revolutionaries (who take control in some periods) and reactionaries (who drive events in others). Today, reactionaries are in the forefront.
If you haven’t heard much about the Supreme Court during this presidential election, it might be because neither candidate has much to gain by highlighting the issue. Much of the liberal constitutional agenda has already been achieved in the last two years on the court; conservatives realize they’ve already lost the culture war on key topics.
In a video of the Sept. 16 shooting of Terence Crutcher, one of the officers watching the scene from a police helicopter can be heard to say, “That looks like a bad dude, too.” Which raises a question: How did the officer know Crutcher was a bad dude?
In the most recent clinical trial of Biogen’s experimental drug aducanumab, 165 participants were given varying doses of the drug or a placebo. Brain scans revealed that those taking the drug had a marked reduction in amyloid plaque — a deposit associated with Alzheimer’s disease. There’s little evidence the drug can reverse dementia, but there’s reason to believe something like it might ward off Alzheimer’s disease in healthy people.
When it comes to leadership in times of crisis, the evidence is that Donald Trump would jump to conclusions, entertain conspiracy theories and lash out in rhetoric that seems tough but actually complicates the task of being in charge.
Team Clinton likely will insist that she exposed her opponent’s shallow grasp of facts and policy. Team Trump likely will shout that their guy exposed her for the corrupt and duplicitous woman that she is. Given the awful choices before us, both will probably be right.
The world is a mess, with billions of people locked in inescapable cycles of war, famine and poverty, with more children than ever perishing from hunger, disease and violence.
Democrat Jason Kander, who served a tour of duty in Afghanistan, assembles an assault rifle blindfolded in a TV ad. His opponent, Sen. Roy Blunt, had been lambasting Kander for his failure to toe the straight National Rifle Association line.
If the Libertarian Party essentially stands for a return to all the worst abuses of the Gilded Age, then why do millennials seem to support that third-party bid? Maybe they know little about the platform. But don’t vote for a minor-party candidate to make a statement. Nobody cares.
Has there ever been another presidential campaign in which the candidates accused each other of being in league, wittingly or not, with the nation’s worst enemies? Yet Islamic State factors deeply into the current presidential campaign.
Our country has had bouts of homegrown terrorism before. The anarchist movement of the 19th century led to the Haymarket bombing in 1886; the 20th century saw the assassination of President McKinley in 1901 and labor union bombings.
Even the most imposing dictatorships prove in the end to be hollow. So American diplomacy should be aimed at quietly pushing China and South Korea to begin planning for the day the North Korean regime falls.
We are animals who can’t flourish unless we can’t get along without one another. Yet one finds too many people thrust into lives of semi-independence, sometimes by joining the unemployment rolls.
Donald Trump says his tax cuts would be paid for by economic growth, but we’ve been here before. Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush tried supply-side “trickle-down” economics. We should have learned our lessons then.
An Observer investigation uncovered dozens of N.C. lottery retailers or employees — the gatekeepers to potential fortunes — who beat improbable odds time and again to collect significant prizes at their own stores. Here's how unlikely that can be.
Adam Bell, Gavin Off, Meta Viers, Patrick Gleason, and Ali RizviMcClatchy
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How one store owner won the N.C. lottery 36 times
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First look at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
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Bill Self on the pressure to win at KU and finding balance in life
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Royals fans describe their feelings about the 2016 Royals
