After leaving high school, my father worked in factories and drove trucks. College was never in the cards for him. Though a good thinker — the Navy put him in a program dominated by college grads — he never excelled academically. And in any case, he had parents and young brothers to support. A successful […]

Here’s a true story about a fine woman with an advanced degree whom I will not name for obvious reasons: We were chatting one day, when her little girl broke in to say she was hungry. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Rather than respond with “Here’s a cookie to hold you until family dinner,” […]

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency over an environmental disaster that he insists has nothing to do with him. It’s true that red tide — an evil-smelling algae bloom now fouling the precious beaches along Florida’s southwestern coast — is an oft-repeated natural phenomenon. Thousands of dead tarpons, manatees, sea turtles […]

The most memorable campaign event I attended in 2016 was a rally for John Kasich in Rhode Island. The participants seemed the cream of the middle class — many old-fashioned small-business Republicans, as my father was. The Ohio governor spoke on the benefits of not being angry with everyone all the time. His prescriptions were […]

Dear Sombra, So you’re the German shepherd so good at sniffing out stashes of cocaine that drug traffickers in Colombia want you dead. Your story — how your laser-guided snout helped the Colombian National Police seize at least 9 tons of drugs, leading to 245 arrests — has gone global. You are also a gentle […]