Democracy’s premise is that ordinary citizens can make solid decisions on complex issues. But this basic principle and the structure of laws and practices erected over the centuries to safeguard it are being questioned as rarely before.

Ten weeks of protests, some huge, a few violent, culminated Monday with a shutdown of the Hong Kong airport.

WASHINGTON — Someday, in the not-so-distant future, sea-level rise could claim Mar-a-Lago. Perhaps President Trump — by then no doubt disgraced, shunned and all but forgotten — would still be around to see his beloved Florida resort wiped out by a "Chinese hoax."

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It is difficult to discourage and impossible to manage Justin Amash because he, unusual among politicians, does not want much and wants nothing inordinately. He would like to win a sixth term as congressman from this culturally distinctive slice of the Midwest.

Almost everyone loves puppies and kittens, Sweet, playful and cuddly, they can soften even the hardest heart. But far too many people don't think about all of the responsibilities of being a pet owner before bringing Spot or Tiger home with them.

Why would President Donald Trump think of setting Rod Blagojevich free?

By Jim Nowlan

You wouldn't think it could, but it gets worse day by day. He's like the most egregious nutjob on your Facebook feed, only you can't "unfriend" him.

Pencils? Check.

I have never been a big fan of Bernie Sanders. His authoritarian tendencies and aggressive attacks on any who would disagree have outweighed the good in him.

CHICAGO — Given its surplus of violence and scarcity of resources, Chicago surely has bigger things to worry about than the menace, as the city sees it, of Laura Pekarik's cupcakes. Herewith redundant evidence of regulatory government's unsleeping solicitousness for the strong.

Once upon a time, President Trump pledged to "drain the swamp."

The 24-hour hotline at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is at the front line in the agency's fight against child abuse and neglect. An incoming call about a potential abuse or neglect case can set in course a child's rescue — or keep a child imperiled if not timely pursued.

WASHINGTON — One of the everlasting social forces in directing human behavior — shame — has become part of the 2020 presidential race.

WASHINGTON — The erratic Trump administration has had just one consistent policy principle, one guiding North Star: punitive and often sadistic treatment of nonwhite immigrants.

We’re tired.

Those who believed America's racial divide would begin to close with the civil rights acts of the 1960s and the election of a black president in this century appear to have been overly optimistic.

After the tragic attacks in El Paso and Dayton, the country should be having two debates: one about gun control, the other about speech control. It's not enough to know how assailants use firearms. We have to know why they are used.

Do you feel as if you could be a target? Do you wonder whether you’re safe while shopping or at church or attending a summer concert?

WASHINGTON — It is not just his stoking of white supremacist sentiment that makes Donald Trump such a dangerously unfit president. It's also the corruption, the weakness, the ignorance, the incompetence and the stunning lack of empathy — all of which we saw last week on grotesque display.

WASHINGTON — Regimes, however intellectually disreputable, rarely are unable to attract intellectuals eager to rationalize the regimes' behavior. America's current administration has "national conservatives." They advocate unprecedented expansion of government in order to purge America of ex…

Beginning Monday, many more vehicles carrying precious cargo will share the streets and roads with the rest of us — school buses filled with students. With the beginning of a new school year for many area students comes the potential danger of distracted drivers.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — As the entire nation reeled from the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, South Carolinians were met with news that a local teen had made violent, racist videos and threatened to shoot up his high school.

When he set out to extract concessions from China and other countries, President Donald Trump assured Americans that "trade wars are good, and easy to win." He regarded previous presidents as easy marks for devious foreign governments, and he thought his tough tactics would force those rival…

We keep hearing about this wonderful economy of ours. Jobs plentiful. Inflation low. Interest rates low. Where's the problem?

Seeking a ratings extravaganza, the same cable news networks that televised Donald Trump's airport arrivals during the 2016 campaign as if he were the pope or the Rolling Stones are currently presenting another kind of "reality TV": the 2020 Democratic presidential debates.

As it is every August in Springfield, the excitement and anticipation of the Illinois State Fair is permeating the air.

It's almost funny, in a twisted sort of way. Election after election, Republicans have based their core political appeal on fear.

"It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men." — Eric Hoffer

The headlines seem to come in rapid-fire succession, one eclipsing the other, filling us with horror and heartbreak: Twenty innocent people killed and more than two dozen wounded at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where families were doing their back-to-school shopping on what surely began as a…

WASHINGTON — The more we learn, the more Jeffrey Epstein resembles an evil comic book character for the developmentally arrested intellectual — the charming-but-lurid mastermind with a plot to take over the world by impregnating scores of women on a remote desert estate.

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party may not have pulled the triggers, but they still bear some responsibility for the weekend's atrocities. The only way to keep military-style weapons of war out of the clutches of would-be mass killers is to take away…

Guns: 393.3 million in U.S. civilian hands.

In his opening statement at Wednesday's Democratic debate in Detroit, Joe Biden addressed Donald Trump while pointing proudly to the racial and ethnic diversity of the nine Democrats standing beside him.

I’ve been struck recently by news coverage of climate change and humans’ degradation of the planet. Two opposing themes keep appearing. One is the sense that, as individuals, there’s little we can do; the forces are too large. The other – and I think many Americans would agree with this ­– i…

Do something to end the killing

WASHINGTON — After the second two-night Democratic candidates' "debate," Joe Biden remains a vulnerable front-runner. And it's definitely time to start winnowing the field.

Winnow: verb. To expose (grain or other substances) to the wind or to a current of air so that the lighter particles (as chaff or other refuse matter) are separated or blown away. — Oxford English Dictionary

Danville's fire station, ambulance crews and neighborhood associations hope to see you soon — but not in an emergency situation. The groups joined forces to promote and support National Night Out on Tuesday.

At the convenience store in my rural town, there is a new “wall” of plastic boxes filled with colorful lottery instant-game tickets, right on the counter, crowding my effort to check out; you can’t avoid them.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The idea of a race war has long animated white supremacists, who seem to think that such a conflict would result in a white victory, whatever that would mean.

At the end of a report from last March, The Washington Post describes a meeting between William McGlashan, a wealthy senior executive of a global private-equity firm, and William Singer, the architect of a college admissions bribery scandal.

Do you worry that the clothes you buy pose an environmental hazard? The idea never crossed my mind until serious news sources started talking about it. The central claim was that the fashion industry is the world's second biggest source of pollution, the first being oil.

'Please allow me to introduce myself; I'm a man of wealth and taste." — "Sympathy for the Devil," The Rolling Stones

The Trump administration’s proposal to cut about 3.1 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, literally and figuratively is a punch in the gut to Southern Illinois.