Kennedy’s final opinion was a last stand for the decent Republican…

We now know that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's concurrence in the travel ban case, Trump vs. Hawaii, was a valediction. But a valediction for what? In the final opinion of his 30-year Supreme Court tenure, and his 43-year federal judicial career, Kennedy made two main points as he added nuance to the court's decision that President Trump has wide latitude to bar citizens from entering the United States.

Leonard Pitts: What happens when the social covenant is torn?

Granted, that was the inescapable buzzword last week as the left wing rose in pointedly uncivil protest of the evil being perpetrated by the Republican Party and the moral monstrosity who is our president. GOP officials found themselves turned away from one restaurant, heckled in two others and confronted at the movies.

Opinion: Where Do We Go From Here?

President Donald Trump makes remarks to the media upon arriving in the Capitol for a meeting on immigration with House Republicans on June 19. On Monday evening, Judy Woodruff asked me and USA Today's Susan Page on the "PBS NewsHour" how the country moves forward from its current state of division. I didn't have a good answer.

Keep standards high to oppose Trump more effectively

Since he announced his campaign for high office in 2015, President Donald Trump has waged a relentless battle against the dignity of American institutions, from the legal system to Congress, while tearing down, often viciously, any individual who might stand in his way. The erosion of civility has not been restricted to the White House.

The Question GOP Candidates Fear Most In 2018

Alan Baron, who was a wise and witty man of politics, used to tell this true story to remind those who worked in politics like he did that in some election years, the outcome is determined by events and forces completely beyond any candidate's or her campaign's control. As a 21-year-old, Baron was managing in his heavily Republican hometown of Sioux City, Iowa, a long-shot congressional campaign for an underfunded Democrat when Vincent Burke, the frankly sacrificial Democratic nominee for a solidly Republican state Senate seat, approached him with a request for $300.

Without civil society, there’s no civility

The audacity of the recent actions by immigration officials - separating children from their parents en masse , and warehousing the kids indefinitely in underequipped facilities - explains some of the recent abandonment of political civility. President Trump's very nature, regardless of actions, explains some more.

Contact Peterson over immigration policies

I was surprised upon receiving Rep. Collin Peterson's weekly newsletter June 22 to find that our Congressman had not addressed the heinous separation of children from parents seeking asylum or immigration that was mandated by the Trump administration. Yes, I see that President Trump - who had declared a day before that only Democrats could fix ICE detention of children, including infants and toddlers, without their parents - has rescinded the policy.

Maureen Testoni: 340B Drug Discount Program a critical resource for safety-net hospitals

The May 28 op-ed by Debra Patt and Ray Page, "Support bipartisan fixes to the 340B Drug Discount Program," mischaracterizes the 340B program. It is a crucial resource for taking care of vulnerable patients, and the notion that "bad actors" are taking advantage of the program for their own financial gain simply does not match the situation on the ground in Texas or anywhere else in the nation.

These Harvard Kids Got the Lesson of Their Lives in the Heartland

On a blustery afternoon in April, I filed into a van along with 10 students from Harvard University. We had just spent the last two days in Chicopee, Massachusetts, where we had chatted with the police chief and his force, the mayor and his staff, small business owners, waitresses and firemen about their struggles living in small-town America.

Case vs. Theranos troubling

Of greatest importance now in the criminal case involving the Silicon Valley, Calif., blood-testing company Theranos is not whether the company's two leaders will receive adequate punishment if convicted. Rather, the immediate concern must be whether any of the medical patients who were victims of the company's alleged misdeeds suffered serious or irreparable harm as a result of the unconscionable conduct of which the company is accused.

Andy Puzder sees ‘big plus’ for workers in Trump’s proposed merger of Education and Labor Departments

Had he not withdrawn his nomination under pressure, former CKE Restaraunts CEO Andy Puzder would be heading in to the Labor Department right now - a department the Trump administration proposed merging with the Department of Education just last week. Asked about the proposal in a Friday interview with the Washington Examiner, Puzder said, " The simple answer to that is I think it's a good idea.