Along and well-documented record testifies to the model behavior of Leslie Van Houten during the decades she has spent in prison for her role in killing Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in 1969, when she was a 19-year-old member of Charles Manson’s cult.

Chris Christie’s running. So’s Mike Pence. And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. And Sen. Tim Scott, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and, in case you haven’t heard, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And — oops, we almost forgot — a guy named Donald J. Trump, who was just a dishonest New York City real estate promoter before he became the 45th president of the United States (and the 10th president to lose his reelection bid).

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when our national obsession with drag queens began. Sometime after they started appearing in libraries for children’s story hours but before Target began selling “tuck-friendly” bathing suits would be my guess.

The 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count conducted from Jan. 23-29 asked, “Where did you sleep on Sunday, January 22?”

Aloha from NAMI! We are NAMI Big Island, an affiliate of NAMI Hawaii.

The Social Security Administration, the federal agency serving the largest number of Americans, is facing its worst crisis in decades, due to underfunding and under-staffing.

We’ve known Gov. Ron DeSantis has been running — hard — for the White House for months, campaigning in all but name from Ohio and Michigan to Israel and Japan.

The “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” rule, the Biden administration’s new immigration order, is in many ways as draconian in rejecting asylum claims as the pandemic-era Title 42 that it replaces. The new rule stands to dangerously dismantle many of the protections our current laws afford. It is clear that the new measure contradicts our moral and human rights obligations and should be scrapped.

In our country, privilege for one often means oppression for another. The anti-racism movement acknowledges this reality — making the movement a target for politicians such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last week signed into law a bill blocking public colleges from using federal or state funding on “diversity, equity and inclusion” programming.

The Colorado River deal announced Monday is more of a temporary reprieve than a solution to plummeting water supplies. The deep water cuts for California, Arizona and Nevada will tide over thirsty residents and farmers only until the end of 2026.

The US nursing workforce is shedding workers. About 100,000 nurses quit or retired during the pandemic, while another 800,000 have signaled an “intent to leave” by 2027. And yet, the country is failing to tap an available group of qualified health-care workers: immigrants. While there’s no single fix for the US’s nursing shortage, a more efficient system to bring in foreign-trained professionals would go a long way toward easing it.

I am always amazed when, in the aftermath of a mass shooting such as the tragedy in Allen, Texas, both political parties expect their overly simplistic explanations to be taken seriously, their anemic policy proposals accepted as dependable solutions.