Indianapolis offers the full urban deal: great architecture, hot restaurants, famous museums and a walkable downtown. But it also has had one of the worst panhandler problems I've seen. At almost every street corner, it seemed, someone was squeezing you for money.
When Democrats and Republicans agree, I get nervous. It often means that they agree to grab my wallet.
Moderate Republicans are, were, good things. I use the past tense "were" because as they became rarities, the centrists' chief function was preserving majorities in Congress for their radicalized party.
Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in.
New York City seems on the verge of making the same mistake that Detroit made 40 years ago. The mistake is to abolish the NYPD practice referred to as stop and frisk.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained at London's Heathrow Airport for nine hours -- no waterboarding or electric shocks, just pointed questions and confiscation of David Michael Miranda's computer gear. That prompted Greenwald to threaten Britain with more of his writings.
The mere prospect of Hillary Rodham Clinton running for president again is evidently provoking outrage among old adversaries -- from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to Maureen Dowd -- whose appetite for bogus "Clinton scandals" will never be sated. With the fizzling of Benghazi after an official State Department probe found no wrongdoing by the former Secretary of State, her critics have moved on, casting a gimlet eye on the charitable foundation built by her husband, the former president, over the past decade. Although Hillary has mostly been very busy elsewhere, the foundation provides an ample target for speculation and spite -- so long as critics ignore what it actually does for people around the world.
We need police to catch murderers, thieves and con men, and so we give them special power -- the power to use force on others. Sadly, today's police use that power to invade people's homes over accusations of trivial, nonviolent offenses -- and often do it with tanks, battering rams and armor you'd expect on battlefields.
In his book "Rise of the Warrior Cop," Radley Balko recounts the rise of police SWAT teams (SWAT stands for Special Weapons And Tactics) armed with heavy military equipment. SWAT raids began as rarely used methods of dealing with violent situations, like hostage-takings.
This Congress has been criticized for not passing many laws -- and praised for that in some quarters. And it's true that in quantitative terms its productivity has been low.
To discover what Chelsea Clinton is doing with her life -- and why -- shouldn't pose much of a challenge to any reasonably industrious journalist. In recent months, after all, she has stepped into the spotlight to advance the causes that excite her. Yet the political press still seems far more inclined to ruminate over her supposed ambitions rather than report her real concerns.
Women make only 77 cents per each dollar made by males. Outrageous! Sex discrimination!
In the Industrial Midwest, the city government of Detroit went into bankruptcy in July. Out in California, the city governments of Stockton and San Bernardino entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2012.
Guy limps off the tennis court with an obvious sprained ankle. The doctor tells him to go home, elevate the leg and put some ice where it hurts.
On immigration, the Republican Party is trapped in two trains of thought, each speeding along the wrong track. At the tea party end, there's absolute resistance to normalizing the status of illegal immigrants. On the cheap-labor side, there's this big push to admit as many unskilled immigrants as possible.
What is the most intellectually dishonest profession around? My nomination: the admissions officers at highly selective colleges and universities.
One of the sure signs that political activists have too much time on their hands is all the chatter about who will win the 2016 presidential nominations.
With the conviction of Bradley Manning and asylum granted to Edward Snowden in Russia, it may be time to turn attention away from the controversy over their actions and toward the government -- specifically, the intelligence community. Whatever ultimate judgment is leveled on Manning's or Snowden's actions, they have raised real questions about the ways that the United States gathers, uses and classifies information.
Global average temperature has been flat for a decade. But frightening myths about global warming continue.
We're told there are more hurricanes now. We're told that hurricanes are stronger. But the National Hurricane Center says it isn't so.
Meteorologist Maria Molina told me it's not surprising that climatologists assumed hurricanes would get worse. "Hurricanes need warm ocean waters," but it turns out that "hurricanes are a lot more complicated than just warm ocean waters."
During the 2001 assault on the World Trade Center, I was trapped in a train under Manhattan for hours. As news of the collapsing towers, the attack on the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania filtered down to the passengers, the conductor kept telling us this tunnel was the safest place we could be. Meanwhile, the tunnels were being searched for explosives.
Ronald Reagan had a vision for the future of the country and an incredible ability to communicate it.
