Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.

Laws matter, but typically changing the law by itself accomplishes little.

In the long struggle against sex trafficking, we finally have a breakthrough!

More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction

The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.

Guilt-tripping people does not work; they tend to be turned off.