Give thanks. Because this isn't one of those Thanksgiving lists of things for which we should be grateful -- although health, family, friends, laughter, etc., would certainly all be on mine.

And Jane Goodall.

Yes, that Jane Goodall, the woman we all grew up with watching those National Geographic specials...

If you want to royally tick off New Yorkers, try telling us what to do.

That's probably why the police stopped trying to enforce the jaywalking laws here years ago (as opposed to Washington, DC, where I once got one too many tickets and was sent to pedestrian school).

And...

In Great Britain, Remembrance Sunday falls on the second Sunday of November, the one closest to November 11th, the anniversary of the end of the First World War in 1918. Once, the world called November 11th Armistice Day. Now, here in the States at least, it is Veteran's Day.

As...

ATHENS, GREECE - Last Sunday, we visited the ruins of ancient Delphi, two hours or so from the Greek capital, an extraordinary site at the base of Mount Parnassus overlooking the Pleistos Valley almost half a mile below. You could see the acres of olive trees. The Ionian Sea shimmered...

On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans.

His very name made his life's work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a Federal judge for the Eastern District of...

Despite the graciousness of his speech at the White House last Friday, President Obama's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize did have an air slightly reminiscent of Lincoln's story about the man who was tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a rail -- if it wasn't for the...

On Tuesday, October 13, the Senate Finance Committee finally is scheduled to vote on its version of health care insurance reform. And therein lies yet another story in the endless saga of money and politics.

In many polls, the majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative -- like Medicare --...

You certainly can argue that the depths to which our so-called democratic dialogue has sunk are nothing new. Politicians and advocates have been slinging mud since the earth was cool enough to hurl.

The undeniable difference today is the speed and variety of the compost being thrown. With the 24-hour...

If you ever needed proof that Washington is governed by the Golden Rule -- the one that says, he who has the gold, rules -- you only have to look at the wagon-loads of cash being dumped by big business into crushing President Obama's domestic agenda.

Good gosh, how the...

There was a certain ironic and painful symmetry at work last month. As one iconic image of war was called into doubt, another was being created, a new photograph of combat's grim reality that already has generated controversy and anger.

When it was first published in 1936, during the Spanish...

The envelope, please. And the winner for "most influential motion picture in American politics"" is ... Hillary: The Movie.

Never heard of it? Not surprising -- very few people saw it in the first place. But Hillary: The Movie -- a no-holds-barred attack on the life and career of Hillary...

Toward the end of George McGovern's failed presidential bid in 1972, I was helping advance a bus trip for vice presidential candidate Sargent Shriver. The final weekend of the campaign, his caravan would start in New Hampshire and work its way down the Eastern seaboard, holding rallies along the way...

A sorry state of affairs. If it wasn't for all the 40th anniversary celebrations of Woodstock, the primary cultural contribution of the month would be the announcement that Tom DeLay of Texas -- birther, born again and former Republican House Majority Leader -- will be a contestant in the next...

When I was 15, my father was in a near-fatal car collision with a semi-trailer truck. At Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, he lay in a coma for two months.

As the medical bills mounted and the insurance was running out, my mother had to make an agonizing decision....

For a bit of change, let's talk about a different kind of health care reform -- the kind that affects the health of the planet.

The other evening, I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. Robert Siegel was interviewing Dr. Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest...

In retrospect, we knew we were done for the night Johnny Carson said George McGovern sounded like Liberace.

Those of us working on McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign staff had seen some highs and lows: the extraordinary campaign of primary victories that won him the Democratic nomination; the screwed-up party convention...