We’re not going to spend a lot of time talking about what happened. Not that Austin Police Officer Bryan Richter’s June 2015 takedown — let’s not dignify it by calling it an “arrest” — of 26-year-old school teacher Breaion King is not worthy of discussion. As seen in a dashcam video unearthed last week by […]

How can anyone ever explain this to Mason? He’s only 4 months old, so that moment still lies years in the future. Still, at some point, too soon, he will ask the inevitable questions, and someone will have to tell him how his dad was shot to death for being a police officer in Baton […]

Here’s something I never thought I’d have to say. People should not play Pokemon at Auschwitz. Nor at the Sept. 11 memorial in New York City, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, or Arlington National Cemetery. You would think this obvious, but apparently it isn’t. According to reports, people have been playing the […]

This is not about the police. At least, not solely. Granted, the police are the reason we are heartbroken today, the reason cable news networks are assembling panels to talk about black and blue, the fraught intersection between African Americans and the law. Last week, after all, saw two more African-American men shot by police […]

I still remember your funeral. I still remember the white casket, small with only two handles on each side. I still remember the red teddy bear someone had placed near your head. I still remember then-Florida state lawmaker Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall weeping over your coffin, then-Congressman Kendrick Meek standing there in speechless anguish, and then-Florida House […]

On Saturday, someone tried to kill Donald Trump. You may not have heard about it. The story didn’t get much play, the attempt wasn’t well planned and the candidate was never in jeopardy. Still the fact remains that authorities arrested one Michael Steven Sandford, 19, after he allegedly tried to grab a gun from the […]

I am supposed to be writing about a shooting in Orlando, but my thoughts keep circling back to a funeral in Louisville. About the shooting, you have doubtless already heard your fill of grisly details. Suffice it to say that in the dark hours of Sunday morning, a Muslim man armed with a military-style assault […]

This is a column about the value of six. Actually, it’s about three individual sixes and their respective values. The first six came after a 23-year-old woman — her name has never been revealed — spoke in court to address the man who raped her last year, who took her out behind the dumpsters and […]

In 1933, Franz von Papen was hungry for revenge. Having been ousted as chancellor of Germany through political subterfuge, he wanted payback against the former ally who had succeeded him. So he struck a new alliance, this one with Adolf Hitler, leader of a rising popular movement called the Nazis, and maneuvered to have him […]