Rich Lowry: The shoplifting capital of the USA

The shoplifting problem represents a deliberate choice rather than an unstoppable tide. Modern societies long ago figured out how to maintain civil order such that law-abiding people could buy and sell goods without being systematically preyed on by thieves. It’s just that the Bay Area has chosen to forget.

Editorial cartoon for Tuesday, Nov. 30

Patients now see their records, but can they understand them?

Providers need to do a better job of explaining to patients what tests we order and why. And we need to be available to explain and answer questions when scary results come in. Important in this era of primary-care physician burnout, providers need to be reimbursed for the significant hours that appropriate and sensitive patient-portal communication demands.

Good luck trying to bag a Santa this year

The nationwide worker shortage has stricken an array of industries, as varied as fast food, textile mills and long-haul trucking. The crisis, as news outlets have been chronicling with increasing worry, extends all the way up to the North Pole.

Leonard Pitts Jr.: ‘True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar’

Giving is good, and every person who is able to do so, should. But it would be even better to restructure the edifice that produces a need for giving — to realize, as author Celine-Marie Pascale puts it, that what America really needs is not a “seasonal moment of generosity” but “a reckoning for justice.”

Editorial cartoon for Sunday, Nov. 28

Editorial cartoon for Saturday, Nov. 27

Bob Neal: The Countryman: Inflation of two kinds, or three

Each buyer has an equilibrium point for each purchase. Some willingly pay more, some don’t. At the $5 a pound I paid for my Thanksgiving bird, I was at my equilibrium point. But $5 was way too far to the right of equilibrium for the vast majority of turkey eaters.

Editorial cartoon for Friday, Nov. 26

Covy Dufort: Pro-lifers shouldn’t be pro-death

We may feel that someone should die for the crimes they committed, but that does not mean we should kill. As we value the life of embryos, we must consider how other innocent lives are taken every year and reconsider the true cost of the death penalty.