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Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall join this year's roster of celebrity deaths. Their names and fame preoccupy us in public mourning, though most of us were no closer to them in life than to a movie or television screen. Mourning differs in different times, but how we experience the tears and the reminiscences tells us a lot about ourselves. Discussions about these stars continue in the public prints because both touched us with their talent. We were their audience in the darkness of the movie theater or before a smaller screen, sitting next to friends and family, mixing up our...

The number of people traveling to Switzerland to commit suicide has doubled since 2009, a new study shows. These "suicide tourists" are largely from Germany and the United Kingdom, although they also come from other countries including the United States and Canada, and nearly half suffer from nonfatal neurological conditions, such as paralysis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis, the study suggests. Saskia Gauthier, MD, from the Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Zurich, and colleagues report their findings in an article published online August 20 in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Assisted suicide is restricted in many countries, but in...

Among the demands of the "protesters" in Ferguson is that the investigation and prosecution of police officer Darren Wilson be taken away from St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. McCulloch is biased, it is said. How so? In 1964, his father, a St. Louis police officer, was shot to death by an African-American. Moreover, McCulloch comes from a family of cops. He wanted to be a police officer himself, but when cancer cost him a leg as a kid, he became a prosecutor. Yet, in 23 years, McCulloch has convicted many cops of many crimes, and has said that if...

Bad actors around the globe keep getting confused about the calendar, and it falls to the Obama administration to set them straight. The Russians, Secretary of State John Kerry protested back in March, have forgotten what century we're living in: "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext." Kerry was echoing President Obama's observation that by seizing Crimea, Russian president Putin was putting himself "on the wrong side of history." It's a theme this president sounded in his first inaugural address, warning that "those who cling to power...

Bay Area billionaire Tom Steyer's blitz against candidates who are soft on climate change is underway in seven states, but some prominent fact-checking groups say he's emitting enough hot air to melt a few glaciers. Negative reviews from watchdogs like PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and the Washington Post are dogging one of the nation's biggest political donors, a former hedge fund manager who ditched his ties to fossil fuels and presented himself as a transparent antidote to the conservative Koch brothers' semi-clandestine funding network.

It is summer time in San Antonio. Mid-July, the 15th to be exact. The temperature approaches 100 degrees. It is a Texas summer day to be sure. Pastor Roman Herrera, instead of sitting inside enjoying lemonade and air conditioning, is instead working his way through alleyways.

Does the president think the world is a TV show? One of the things you learn watching television as a kid is that the hero wins. No matter how dire things look, the star is going to be OK. MacGyver always defuses the bomb with some saltwater taffy before the timer reaches zero. There was no way Fonzie was going to mess up his water-ski jump and get devoured by sharks. Life doesn't actually work like that. That's one reason HBO's "Game of Thrones" is so compelling. Despite being set in an absurd fantasy world of giants, dragons and ice...

The amount of mockery presidents endure usually corresponds with their polling. It applies to Republicans (Nixon, Bush, Bush), but sometimes also to Democrats (Carter). In 2012, the Center for Media and Public Affairs found network late-night shows told twice as many jokes about Mitt Romney as they told about President Obama. Was it because Obama was more popular than Romney? Or did it make Obama more popular than his opponent? Obama isn't running for office again, so there's no need for satirists to go easy on him at the risk of endangering his electability. The last NBC poll put Obama's...

1,461 Days of Summer The headline was brutal. “Bam’s Golf War: Prez tees off as Foley’s parents grieve,” read the cover of Thursday’s New York Daily News. Obama’s gaffe was this: He had denounced the beheading of James Foley from a vacation spot in Martha’s Vineyard, then went to the golf course. Seems like he had a great time. Such a great time that he returned to the Farm Neck Golf Club—sorry, membership is full—the next day. Technically, Obama’s vacation began on August 9. It is scheduled to end on Sunday, August 24. With the exception of a two-day interlude...

The one-sided media and the mob aim to beat doubters into silence, but striking back is not the answer. I stayed silent, like a lot of white folks, while events unfolded in Ferguson, Mo. I was flabbergasted at the anger of the protesters and their certainty, which seemed to doubt any narrative but the one presented by the family attorney, who replayed his Trayvon Martin appearance: Brown was “executed in broad daylight.” A young man — not a boy — lay dead in the streets of a quiet suburb that, whatever its flaws, does not fit our usual image of...

The violence that turns a small-town protest into a fiery national spectacle like the one that has played out this month in Missouri is often unwittingly provoked by police, according to researchers at UC Berkeley. The research team, which studied clashes between police and activists during the Occupy movement three years ago, found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics, such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military-like formations.

Kenyan businessman claims US 'owns' Ebola Cape Town – A Kenyan businessman has reportedly made claims that the United States government owns the Ebola virus that continues to rock West African countries. According to the Business Daily, Joseph Aura told the High Court in Nairobi that the US had patented the Ebola virus, its vaccine and cure in 2012 and should be compelled to bring the health crisis to a stop. The claim was made in court papers supporting Aura’s request to have the Kenya High Court throw out a case filed by the Consumers Federation of Kenya lobby group...

Opinions on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, are strongly divided among racial lines, the latest New York Times/CBS poll shows, but still most people feel race relations in their own communities are good. However, there is a rising feeling among whites that race relations are troubled, The New York Times reported. The poll also shows that while most whites are reserving judgment over whether police officer Darren Wilson was justified in shooting the unarmed teenager, most black respondents said the incident was unjustified.

Two AmericasPosted By Bob Lonsberry On August 22, 2014 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Reposted from Bob Lonsberry.com. The Democrats are right, there are two Americas.The America that works, and the America that doesn’t. The America that contributes, and the America that doesn’t.It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, to obey the law and support themselves and contribute to society, and others don’t.That’s the divide in America.It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility. It’s about a political party that preaches...

Continued violence in Ferguson, Missouri, brings back memories of the urban riots of the 1960s. As it happens, I had a front-row seat back then, as an intern in the office of Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh during the six-day riot in July 1967. At one point I was alone in the so-called command center with Cavanagh and Michigan Gov. George Romney. Forty-three people died in that riot. Many were bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One was a deaf man who did not heed a policeman's command, which he couldn't hear. Sadly, nearly...

What’s the difference between a Playboy magazine and Fremont Unified School District’s sex-ed curriculum? The curriculum is free! The 9th grade textbook, which teachers unanimously approved, has been the center of a nationwide debate over the schools’ role in parenting kids on sensitive topics like this. In this particular California District, thousands of parents are protesting the jaw-dropping topics in the “Your Health Today” curriculum — including everything from bondage, sex toys, and various fantasies. “It’s a bit much for me,” said mom Latonya Stevenson. “I’m not comfortable with my child — I mean, wow, that’s the graphics are extreme...

Clark County's prosecutor said Tuesday he will dismiss a firearms-related charge against a Vancouver man who said he was merely taking Vice President Joe Biden's advice on how to defend his property from car prowlers. Instead, the man will be prosecuted for obstructing a police officer. Jeffrey C. Barton, 53, made international news when he told journalists: "I did what Joe Biden told me to do. I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air.

Sea plankton has been discovered living on the outside of the International Space Station, Russian cosmonauts have claimed. Scientists on board the ISS are reported to have discovered living organisms when taking samples from windows. Head of the Russian ISS orbital mission Vladimir Solovyev said the results of the experiment “are absolutely unique”. Solovyev told the Russian Itar-Tass news agency that the tiny marine life-forms were not native to the launch site in Kazakhstan. “Plankton in these stages of development could be found on the surface of the oceans,” he said. “This is not typical for Baikonur [in Kazakhstan]. It...

One of the great quotations of our time is from James Burnham, a former Trotskyite Communist-turned-conservative who became an editor at National Review. Fifty years ago, he wrote in his book Suicide of the West that “Modern liberalism, for most liberals, is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.” To compensate for five decades of public education...

As unaccompanied children from Central America continue to flow illegally into California, Gov. Jerry Brown and top Democratic legislators on Thursday unveiled a groundbreaking plan to spend $3 million to make sure the young migrants get legal help.