In a ballroom in a Beaux Arts landmark building at the Bronx Zoo this week, housing rights for the disabled was on the agenda. The place was packed with the kind of federal, state and non-profit officials and administrators -- and just plain, old working heroes -- who are willing...

Perhaps in the weeks to come I will change my mind. But while the world was listening to Sarah Palin, I was watching her as a hockey mom and as a parent of a disabled child. ("Special needs" is a term that guarantees they won't get what they need!)

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Hopefully this will be the shortest post I will ever write. Hillary listened. We in the autism community asked her to recognize us. And she did. Yet again. At the the Democratic National Convention. She spoke about a mother with two kids with autism who also had cancer. Those...

I swore I wouldn't waste a lot of time dealing with Michael Savage, the radio talk show scold, who recently made the ridiculous claim that the autism epidemic is caused by bad parenting. But perhaps there is one more thing that needs to be said: Mr. Savage, if only you...

As a journalist by profession - and temperament- I have spent far more time writing about protests than joining them. But on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., I marched with a crowd - one of thousands - held a sign, chanted, even wore an angry tee-shirt. As a finale, I stomped...

The candidates are all talking about it, but when Hillary Clinton said it, I cried.

"We will tackle everything from autism to Alzheimer's, cancer to diabetes, and make a real difference," she said, in her Pennsylvania primary victory speech. Later, looking at that one sentence in the light of day,...

Oprah Winfrey has made history again. This time it was a show on autism. Not just another show but one that every parent who has a child with autism can use as a guide.

Hopefully some philanthropist -- perhaps Oprah, herself -- will have millions of copies made and hand...

It's dangerous, I know, as P. T. Barnum warned us, to place your hopes on the good taste of the American people. But that's exactly what I did this summer. I put the proposal for my latest book up on Media...

I am proud to announce that the First Annual Writers on Autism reading will be held in New York City this week on Thursday, June 7, at 7p.m. at the Lifespire Education and Conference Center on the third floor of the Empire State Building.

Eight "diverse" --...

I am, as my readers and friends know, mother to three rambunctious boys who make Rosie O'Donnell look like Shirley Temple singing "On the Good Ship Lollypop." My husband is included in this grouping of three, as well he should be. Everyone in my house, except me, plays ice hockey,...

It's been more than two years since my mother-in-law died and, still, I find myself tooling around town in her clothes, unable to stop wearing a few select items. Sweaters mostly. An odd fit, is what my friends say and not merely because she was long and lean and I...

We all know Oprah is a genius but her tactical courage doesn't really hit home until she is speaking about something near and dear to your heart.

In our house all work stopped at 4 pm yesterday so we could watch Oprah's autism show.
And yes,...

A few weeks ago I said this to a friend: "These people, the ones who are sending out those suicide bombers - the ones who want to kill us - we'll be negotiating with them someday."

Rash statements like this can come back to haunt you. Sometimes,...

I love the check-out clerks at our local Associated Supermarket in Long Beach, New York. But they'd probably be the first to admit that they are not rocket scientists or medical geniuses - not yet anyway. Some of them are very young.

Still, even faced with a...

At my own peril I have been ignoring the hypothesis - and I use the term lightly - from an economist who claims that watching too much television might cause autism.

He'll go away, I thought. He'll get academic brownie points for a paper that prompted...

"A 13-year-old boy with autism died after police say two care workers for the disabled drove him around for 90 minutes - errands, buying beverages and shopping - when he stopped breathing in their van."

That was the first sentence on the front page of a newspaper...

Way back at the turn of the century (circa 1999), I tentatively ventured into new journalism territory to write an admittedly off-the-top-of-my-head weekly political column for Fox News Online.

(Before I lose any Huffington fans, let me note that I was very obviously a Fox "token liberal."...

Our 19-year-old son, Daniel, is tall and handsome with a half smile like Popeye. When he flashes it, people fall in love. Their hearts break, too. Daniel suffers from Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, a rare form of late-onset autism. But autism all the same. He's one of the many victims of...

Years ago when I was a newspaper reporter, I stuck to the old rules of that profession. Support no politicians or parties, anywhere but in your heart. You never know when you might get assigned to cover one of them. Best not to show your hand and undermine your image...