What is happening in Europe makes me think about our own country's hopelessly broken immigration system. There are uncomfortable parallels in the two situations.

All political candidates dissemble. Indeed, all people do. A degree of deception is required in order to be civil. "It was a pleasure to meet you," is often just a way to gracefully exit a conversation. But at what point does a political candidate take deception too far?

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The Kim Davis situation raises interesting questions about the meaning and practical effect of the freedom of religion. Although, for reasons that I will explain, the issue today is one of public policy, rather than constitutional law, the evolution of constitutional principles in this realm is illuminating.

Dr. Michael Breus is a clinical psychologist and author of The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan: Lose Weight Through Better Sleep. In answer to my questions, he shared his thoughts on the major obstacles to getting a good night's sleep, the steps you can take to improve your sleep, and the future of sleep technology.

More is at stake than individual health; international security is at risk. Experts have identified water as the number one global risk in terms of significant negative impact on countries in the coming decade. Water can either be a source of conflict or cooperation.

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Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The question (and it is a question that cannot be answered by just parsing the text) is, What does it mean to freely exercise one's religion?

Despite all the meetings, promises, and apocalyptic threats, global carbon emissions have risen from the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 until today -- from around 6.5 billion metric tons per year to nearly 10 billion.

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Attacks on women's self-determination in body, mind and spirit are a staple of our political life because they work. Unless and until we confront the root reasons why patterns of violence against women work, both overt and covert violence against women will continue to be a political mainstay.

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If there was ever a time for the world to seize the opportunity to commit to undertaking bold action, it's now. 2015 is the year, and we have now reached the crucial weeks that matter most.

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I fear that many of my Republican colleagues do not understand that war must be a last resort, not the first resort. It is easy to go to war, it not so easy to comprehend the unintended consequences of that war.

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In this world, there are few things as painful as the look on the face of a child yearning for the home she used to know, wishing for a way out, desperate for school and the chance to build a stable life.

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Because of something called carried interest, the top 25 hedge fund mangers paid a lower tax rate than the average kindergarten teacher in 2014. Billionaire hedge fund managers don't need a tax break, and there is no reason this loophole should exist.

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Whatever our stories - wherever we were on September 11, 2001 - our 9/11 generation remembers the horrific moment when the attacks were seared into the American psyche.

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We're not even two years removed from the last time the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party held Congress hostage and forced the federal government to shut down for 16 days. Sadly, the wheels are already in motion for another shutdown.

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I am the first person in my family who was born and raised in America -- something I've always recognized as a core part of my identity and, more importantly, in my ongoing identity crisis. I am American. I am Indian. I am Sikh. But I've always considered myself American first.

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Today we launched a campaign will make it possible for all of America to be great. Not just Silicon Valley or Hollywood. Not just Nashville or Broadway. Not just the heartland or the White Mountains. But even Washington, D.C. too. Today we have launched a campaign to give us a government we can be proud of again.

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At the end of this month, thousands of representatives from all over the world will gather in New York. They will witness the launch of the most ambitious universal effort since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The reshaping and re-stating of the "larger freedom" of those rights in a new agenda has a deadline of 2030 for a new, fairer, more sustainable world, with at its centre the drive to achieve full equality of men and women.

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We cannot continue indefinitely to strike at jihadists in Iraq while stopping, absurdly, at the border of the neighboring state.

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If we keep executing defendants in cases like Richard Glossip's, where the evidence of guilt is tenuous and untrustworthy, we will keep killing innocent people.

It's expensive to be poor. So expensive in fact that people who live below a country's poverty line can end up paying 5-15x per liter of water compared to people who live above that poverty line.

Niamey Wilson

I am a woman in a man's profession, and it's certainly time that the prevalence of societal sex-stereotyping is publicly addressed. We begrudgingly accept this level of misogyny and anti-family sentiment when it's subtle, constitutive and mixed with praise for being tough. After all, this is surgery. And surgeons are tough.

At a time many Republican presidential candidates and state legislators are furiously focusing on private morality -- what people do in their bedrooms, contraception, abortion, gay marriage -- America is experiencing a far more significant crisis in public morality.

I am now the parent of two beautiful girls. One of my vows when they were born was to pass my father's soul-building gift of listening on to them.

One of the most under-appreciated aspects of the climate change problem is the so-called "fat tail" of risk. In short, the likelihood of very large impacts is greater than we would expect under typical statistical assumptions. it is time for serious people and serious discussions, not straw men and distractions.

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Here are the habits of the people who have the capacity to be aware of what they feel. Who know how to express, process, dismantle and adjust their experience as they are their own locusts of control.

Jose Ramos Horta

The Broncos, widely used in the Vietnam war, were delivered to Indonesia in 1977-1978, when the slaughter of the Timorese civilian population was at its worst. Torture and mass executions were commonplace. Political prisoners were dropped live from helicopters; entire villages purposely starved to death and more. Most Americans are little aware of either of these events.

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There has been much talk this last week of an upcoming Cabinet reshuffle, and I don't presume to make comment one way or another as to who should go where -- with one notable exception. Mr Abbott, can I respectfully suggest that you consider handing over your role as Minister for Women.

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As a member of the European Parliament, what bothers me most is that even now, with the biggest refugee crisis since WWII knocking on Europe's doors, the E.U. doesn't seem to be conscious of its magnitude. Worse still, it doesn't want to be conscious of it.