Once celebrated by many, Linda Fairstein, the former prosecutor turned mystery book author, now fights for her professional life and reputation for her leading role in the 1990 prosecution of the so-called Central Park Five.

There are many addictions besides drugs, sex and power. There is also our increasing addiction to debt. According to Money Magazine, reporting on figures from the New York Fed, "Americans' debt hit a new high of $13 trillion last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2008 by $280 billion."

WASHINGTON — "It is a great advantage to a president," said the 30th of them, "and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man." Or, Calvin Coolidge would say today, a great woman. While today's incumbent advertises himself as an "extremely stable genius" a…

WASHINGTON — In Alabama, where a new law denies abortion to women even in cases of incest or rape, a rapist may still pursue custody rights of a child conceived during his assault.

WASHINGTON — When the president of the United States sides with a murderous dictator over our own CIA, you would think it would be big news. When that dictator is a communist who has threatened the United States with missile attacks, you would think leaders of the Republican Party might be a…

I launched an experiment last week: I tried to unplug from the tumult of President Donald Trump’s Washington and the Democratic presidential race.

Dear Dave: Is there ever a time when a 30-year mortgage is better than a 15-year mortgage? — Julie

Observances of the 75th anniversary of D-Day are properly focusing on the troops and the architect of Operation Overlord, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who freed Europe from Hitler and his Nazi hordes.

WASHINGTON — The earnest improvers at the College Board, which administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test, should ponder Abraham Maslow's law of the instrument. In 1966, Maslow, a psychologist, said essentially this: If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The C…

Dear Dave: I recently started following your plan, and I’ve looked into refinancing the home I bought five years ago to free up more money to put toward paying off debt. My interest rate is 3.625 percent, along with a private mortgage insurance payment of $200 per month. This makes my mortga…

The quote is attributed to President Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan kept it on his desk: "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

WASHINGTON — If congressional Democrats will temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity about the nation's needs and their political self-interest, they will understand the self-defeating nature of a foredoomed attempt to remove a president for aesthetic reasons. Such reasons are …

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the release of self-admitted “American Taliban” member John Walker Lindh “unexplainable and unconscionable.”

The Poynter Institute is a journalism school and research center that owns the Tampa Bay Times in Florida and has stood tall for journalistic excellence in multiple, impressive ways for years now. Sadly, it recently clip-clopped backward to the point of tripping over an inanity and falling.

Dear Dave: My husband and I are active duty military stationed outside Washington, D.C. We’re completely debt-free and have finished your entire Baby Steps plan, but last month our paid-for rental house in Florida burned down. It was empty at the time, so no one was hurt, and we got a check …

Among the many things that frustrate Americans about Washington, D.C., is the unwillingness — not inability, but unwillingness — to solve problems.

Difficulties with Iran will recur regularly, like the oscillations of a sine wave, and the recent crisis — if such it was, or is — illustrates persistent U.S. intellectual and institutional failures, starting with this: The Trump administration's assumption, and that of many in Congress, is …

WASHINGTON — It’s often said that when our founders wrote the Constitution, they had a leader like Donald Trump in mind when they included various safeguards for our liberties and against abuses of presidential power.

Since 1973, when Roe v. Wade ushered in what would eventually lead to abortion on demand, including partial-birth abortion and even the failure to protect babies born alive after failed procedures — the pro-life movement has achieved few legislative victories.

It doesn’t happen often, but when I agree with President Donald Trump I acknowledge it: Last week a reporter shouted a question at the president: Are we going to war with Iran? The president replied, “I hope not.” So should we all.

Dear Dave: My fiancé and I just started your class, but we’re having trouble getting our beginner emergency fund together. We both work full-time, and I make $59,000 a year while he has worked in retail for several years and makes $22,000 to $25,000. I’m trying to manage a couple of side job…

It was Oscar Levant who uttered the famous line: "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

WASHINGTON — Republican James G. Blaine (1830-1893) was a House speaker, senator and two-time secretary of state, but he is remembered, if at all, for this doggerel: "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine/ the continental liar from the state of Maine." His lasting legacy, however, is even more dis…

Joe Biden, the leading Democrat in the overcrowded presidential sweepstakes (there are more of them running than horses in the recent Kentucky Derby), appears to want to take America back to the days of the Obama administration, which he was a part of for eight years. What would that look like?

Dear Dave: I’ll be retiring in the next couple of years. When I leave my job, we will have a yearly income of $65,000 through my pension. I don’t think we need an emergency fund with such a dependable, steady income stream like that, but my wife disagrees. She says she would feel safer if we…

Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program in 2007 in an attempt to attract people into professions like teaching, nursing and public-interest law. College graduates would be forgiven their student loans if they pursued a career in such professions. The Wall Street Journal …

WASHINGTON — A man who worked in a boxer's corner in a 1962 match against Cassius Clay, as he still was known, explained why the referee stopped the fight in the fourth round: "Things just went sour gradually all at once." It can be like that when government dabbles in protectionism.

How can we ever repay Donald Trump?

Dear Dave: My husband and I are debt-free, and we have an emergency fund of six months of expenses saved. We’d like to buy a home in the $250,000 to $275,000 price range in the near future, and we plan on saving $60,000 for a down payment. It should take a little less than two years to save …

It took a few days, but the New York Times finally got around to apologizing for publishing in its international edition a grossly anti-Semitic cartoon depicting a blind President Trump wearing a yarmulke and being led by a dog resembling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The dog wo…

WASHINGTON — While constitutional lawyers, ethicists and theologians — in descending order of importance in the abortion debate — have been arguing in the 46 years since the Supreme Court attempted to settle the debate, some technologists have been making a consequential contribution to it. …

One of our most colorful legal concepts is the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The phrase was introduced by Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter 80 years ago to hold that evidence obtained illegally cannot be used to convict a defendant.

Dear Dave: I’ve started following your plan, and I’ve got a beginner emergency fund of $1,000 saved.

The long arm of the PC police has reached back to the '30s and arrested, prosecuted and sentenced the late singer Kate Smith. Smith, who popularized Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America" and was a female pioneer in early television, recorded songs that today in hindsight are viewed as racist.