At the end of the month, 30 teams will step out of the dugout to begin another season of Major League Baseball. Thirty rookies are among them. Seventy-six years ago, a rookie stepped out of the dugout and into history. His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson. In a conversation for my book, What Do You Stand For? documentarian Ken Burns...

Lying has become far too pervasive in American culture today. When it’s done by politicians, it’s become normative. When it’s done by the media, it’s reprehensible. For 19 years, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite was the gold standard of trust when it came to reporting the news of the day. Today, some 24/7 cable news programs have become a hodgepodge...

As the death toll rises after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria, one dramatic story—a miracle, really—took our collective breaths away. Amid the rubble and the bodies in the town of Jinderis in northern Syrian, rescue workers recovered a baby which doctors believe was only 3 hours old. With the umbilical cord still attached, the mother had...

Violence, upheaval throughout much of the world, what would Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, the father of nonviolent resistance, say? This week marks the 75th anniversary of Gandhi’s death at the hands of an assassin on his way to a prayer service in Delhi. While Gandhi was an anti-colonialist who practiced and taught his followers non-violent resistance to deal with injustice, Gandhi...

Let’s cut to the chase: Americans expect a higher standard from the US Supreme Court than the other two branches of government . . .  much higher and we’re not getting it. Let’s start with Justice Alito. “A former leader of the anti-abortion movement wrote to the chief justice to report an alleged earlier breach, of a 2014 contraception decision,...

Since this is a two-parter, I’m going to start with a little background. The Supreme Court is expected to have a higher standard than the other two branches of government. We rely on the accumulated legal wisdom of 9 justices—not their political persuasions—to make decisions that affect the entire country. Great idea, yes? Of course. But since all men are...

Here’s what I like about politicians. Every once in a while, we get heroes—people who stand up for what’s right and good and best not just for the people back home, but the entire country. Margret Chase Smith, the Republican Senator from Maine, was such a hero when she stood up against the lies and tactics of her Senate colleague,...

Doubt . . . about virtually everything has infected our culture and political system and those around the world like nothing we’ve seen before. And the ignition switch for much of the misinformation and disinformation contributing to that doubt is social media. When American soccer reporter, Grant Wahl died suddenly while covering the World Cup in Qatar, doubt threw its...

With offensive slurs and threats thrown around, Friday’s election of a House speaker was another example of a lack of civility in America. But our first president, George Washington didn’t have the best of dispositions either. He had a reputation for “tumultuous passions that accompany greatness,” Gouverneur Morris, one of the Founding Fathers, noted of Washington. The Latin word civilis...

Let me say at the outset that I’m not going to win friends or influence many people with this commentary. Football . . . is a beautiful game. With the unexpected death of Pittsburgh Steelers Franco Harris last month, the media refreshed all our memories of “The Immaculate Reception,” the play that not only defined Harris but remains one of...