Although about thirty countries have the death penalty for drug trafficking, only in China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Vietnam are drug offenders routinely executed. Yet, the worst place to be caught drug trafficking is in the Philippines, where thousands have died in extra-judicial killings.In the United States, not only can some drug offenses result in life in prison, “the sentence of death can be carried out on a defendant who has been found guilty of manufacturing, importing or distributing a controlled substance if the act was committed as part of a continuing criminal enterprise.”President Trump has said some outrageous things. He has…

At a dinner party in Manhattan toward the end of November—in the midst of the #MeToo whirlwind—I found myself in the company of right-thinking left-wingers, all of them strongly supportive of the women who have been victims of sexual harassment. Given the progressive character of the gathering, I thought it presented a good opportunity to bring up some concrete ideas about improving the condition of women, over and above the daily denunciations of this or that villain in this or that enterprise. Having witnessed the anger that had led to the removal of several Confederate monuments erected to the glory…

Kyangwali refugee settlement, in western Uganda, is a two-hour drive from Hoima, the nearest town. Halfway through the journey, smooth tar gives way to parched, rugged soil in dry weather, and a muddy quagmire when the rain falls. On this November day, the sun is overzealous. I’m riding in a convoy of SUVs, and the car ahead kicks up a cloud of dust, thick enough to limit visibility to three feet ahead. Along the side of the road, some leafy branches provide shade to a family of baboons who, seeing that I’m about to take a snapshot, flee cautiously into…

hen I ran across an article headlined, “Internet Erupts Over the Name Mike Pence Reportedly Calls His Wife,” my heart sunk a little. That’s because I knew it was a spinoff of this salacious Rolling Stone article about the vice president and I knew that the object of the post was yet another attempt to cast aspersions upon a good man and his family for nothing so much as being completely normal. What is the horrible name Mike Pence is discovered to have used when speaking to his wife? Does he, in the parlance of some of the “artists” asked to perform at…

Article appearing in The FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) Parent Advisory Council Newsletter Fall 2017, published with permission of the author. Parents and those working with parents often lament that “kids don’t come with instructions” and it’s true: we get more documentation when buying a microwave than we do when welcoming a baby into the world. How can we square that reality with both the rising tide of parenting advice and the growing rates of depression and other mental health concerns in young people? Let me suggest a solution to all three challenges: the kids-don’t-come-with-instructions lament,…