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How death penalty opponents share the blame for botched executions

Columns

“Botched” is a perfectly fine word for golf, cooking, or home repair. It seems inadequate for the taking of a life, even the life of Christa Pike, a heinous murderer. In 1996, a jury found Pike guilty of the torture and murder of her Jobs Corps classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Pike was sentenced to death. In the 30 years since, her case has gone through at least seven major rounds of appeal and judicial review, including four petitions to the Supreme Court. All were rejected. This doesn’t even include the many more attempts to reopen or reverse her sentence that went nowhere. She is ...

Dear Annie: Employee out of office, boss out of line

Columns

Dear Annie: I recently returned from a lovely two-week vacation to Europe with my husband. It’s rare that we get a trip like this, so we were looking forward to it, and it did not disappoint! I set clear expectations with my team at work beforehand that I’d be fully off work. Everyone respected that — except my boss, who texted me not once but twice with inconsequential questions he could have easily directed to anyone else on my team. This happened last year, too, which I chalked up to a fluke at the time, but now I’m wondering if it’s a pattern. I’m incredibly ...

The night Linden Avenue stopped feeling safe

Columns

The Evans family threw a Halloween party every year in their backyard on Linden Avenue. Neighbor Jeannine Fisher told WPXI, the local NBC affiliate, that she remembers “tons of people and kids” there. She also remembers the first time she met Idris Evans: He helped carry her groceries from down the street to her house. It’s the kind of street where that still happens. It’s also the kind of street where people don’t think much about whether the kitchen window is open on a warm September night. Just after midnight on Sept. 24, police say someone came through that ...

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: As a 69-year-old female, when my cholesterol reached 250 mg/dL, I was prescribed and started taking 10 mg of rosuvastatin daily. I soon noticed a constant ringing/buzzing in my ears. Six months later, my cholesterol was down to 183 mg/dL. Another four months have passed, and the tinnitus is worse than ever and keeps me up at night. I’m also experiencing daily headaches. Realizing coincidence isn’t causation, I do wonder whether a link of any kind between statins and tinnitus has been investigated. I saw an ear, nose and throat doctor and an audiologist; my hearing ...

Dear Annie: Their stepmother oversteps

Columns

Dear Annie: I have been divorced for four years and share custody of my two children, ages 11 and 14. My ex-husband remarried last year, and I truly wanted his new wife to have a good relationship with the kids. At first, I was grateful. She was kind, showed up to their games and made an effort to include them. But lately, it feels like she is trying to become their mother instead of simply being their stepmother. She buys them clothes without asking, signs school forms, gives punishments and recently told my daughter she could come to her with “anything she wouldn’t feel ...

The central question of power in America

Columns

Behind this election’s dominant issue of affordability lies the record concentration of wealth at the top of America. The richest 0.001% of Americans — a handful of extraordinarily wealthy men — now control more of the nation’s wealth than at any time in modern history. To be sure, wealth is not a zero-sum game in which the riches of those at the top necessarily come at the expense of everyone else. But power is a zero-sum game, because the more of it that is held by some people, the less of it is held by others. Wealth cannot be separated from power. Great wealth becomes ...