Helicopter parents are famous for micromanaging their children’s affairs. There are two kinds. One kind indulges children to the point of near imbecility. No demands are ever placed, no chores required. The parents see their role as obedient servant, concierge and above all, banker. The children eventually become wards of the family estate. The other […]

There’s been a significant rise in “heavy drinking” among Americans, according to a new study out of the University of Washington. But what do these researchers mean by “heavy drinking”? wine lovers must ask. For a woman, heavy drinking is defined as more than one glass of wine a day. For men, it’s more than […]

Friends keep orating that driverless cars are something in the far-ahead future. Apparently, they’re not. That future is near. Exhibit A is Google’s decision to get into the auto insurance business. Now Google wants to be in everyone’s business. But its foray into insuring drivers is highly plausible for a company deep into developing driverless […]

The federal government owns large chunks of the West. It owns 65 percent of Utah, 69 percent of Alaska and 83 percent of Nevada. Some Westerners see unfairness in that. They should not. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska recently slipped an item into a nonbinding budget resolution, calling on the federal government to dispose of […]

In olden days, the way you kept good workers was to pay them more. That’s no longer the case in many jobs. Companies have been using “noncompete” agreements to stop these workers from seeking better compensation at rival companies. Originally designed to stop tech whizzes from taking company secrets to higher bidders, these noncompete agreements […]

How many politicians, aides, lobbyists, lawyers, insurance moguls, professional groups and interns — both the political and medical kind — agonized over the details in the Affordable Care Act? The number is big. But despite thousands of hands in the kitchen, the final product included four words that cast doubt on a cornerstone of the […]

An outbreak of bird flu has forced American farmers to kill millions of egg-laying chickens, 32 million in Iowa alone — hence the rise in egg prices. But why so many? Because our eggs are now produced by a handful of gigantic farms. When one of their birds gets sick, the farmers have to kill […]

Why was 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sentenced to die in a state so generally opposed to capital punishment? A recent Boston Globe poll found that only 19 percent of Massachusetts residents wanted the Boston Marathon bomber put to death. The state hasn’t seen an execution since 1947. That sentence happened because national politics took the matter […]