I know I can be a funny guy, but the laughter took me by surprise. During a recent interview, I was asked about my thoughts on personal responsibility. I hesitated a bit.

Those two words can be very charged. Often, the very mention of "personal responsibility" will cause eyes to bug and heads to spin like those of the demon-possessed. I decided to tread lightly.

 Equal opportunity for JeffersonIn its May 23 edition, The Oregonian stated that enrollment at…

It must be very difficult to become a healthy adult in a family with a history of multigenerational pathology. Normalcy must be an impossible goal to reach if your grandfather robbed bones from graves and then made money for and with Hitler's war machine.

Ever wonder what it would be like to be invisible? You could go around and nobody would see you. Nobody would know you existed. Do you remember playing hide and seek? Wow. If you were invisible, you could always win the game because no one would be able to find you.

Politically challenged New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told a national TV audience recently that a victory by his challenger — Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu — would be a step back to the past. Though Nagin is Black and Landrieu is White, the mayor did not intend this as a deliberate racial slap at Landrieu. But then again, he didn't have to — Blacks have held unbroken power at New Orleans City Hall for three decades.

In a country where 13 million children live in poverty and 9 million are uninsured, most of them in working families, money determines a lot about the circumstances that affect children's health. Health shouldn't depend on wealth — but far too often it does.

Trust the president who led us into Iraq on the basis of disinformation and misinformation? Trust the president who just weeks ago told us the National Security Agency program involved only international calls with al-Qaeda? (That explanation is now apparently "inoperative," to use Richard Nixon's famous phrase.).

A quarter-century ago, the United States embarked on an economic crusade to "downsize" its working class, to eliminate millions of jobs by outsourcing employment abroad and to push millions more middle-class employees into low-wage jobs.

A dozen parents sat down recently to talk about underage drinking. "Up until they are 12 or 13," one of the moms said without intended humor, "they do what you say. Then they stop."

Shelby Steele is a well-known Black conservative and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a leading right wing think tank. He has made a lucrative career for himself by lambasting Black people and praising White people. Steele says that racism is all in the past, that all is right with the world and it is up to Black people to admit it and stop complaining.