When a robot writes your news, what happens to democracy?

A win-win for marketers, advertisers and readers — but a giant loss for democracy as we know it, because it will take away the core of what makes democracies successful: well-informed citizens, who form opinions not by simply reading articlesthey agree with, but by examining that which they don’t agree …

However, social media is not the cause of these events — it has simply given a voice to disenfranchised opinions previously silenced by the mainstream media. The reality is that we live in a global society, one in which cultural exchange is inevitable and such exchanges are fraught with complications.

The president wants a parade, but not some girlie, frilly procession that limits itself to high-stepping musicians, high-reaching headdresses, flutes and floats. He wants muscle. Metal. He wants tanks and soldiers and planes. In his Veterans Day vision, Pennsylvania Avenue bulges with artillery, because in …

Hospitals are disappearing. While they may never completely go away, they will continue to shrink in number and importance. That is inevitable and good. The reputation of hospitals has had its ups and downs. Benjamin Rush, a surgeon general of the Continental Army, called the hospitals of his day the …

The current push for stricter gun control is aiming too low. Sure, passage of new regulations would be a welcome change from our political intransigence and lack of response to our ongoing epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings in this country. But we often talk about The Fix, as if any half-measure …

I’ve been a conservative my entire life. I fell hard for William F. Buckley as a teenager and my first job was as editorial assistant at Buckley’s National Review, followed by stints writing speeches for first lady Nancy Reagan and then working for the Gipper himself. Looking toward the 1988 race, Vice President …

… was treated like just another widget on the hospital’s conveyor belt. “Each day, one person on the medical team would say one thing in the morning, and by the afternoon the plan had changed,” he later told me. “I always was the last to know what exactly was going on, and my opinion hardly mattered.” …

Politics isn’t the only issue where Russia seeks to sway U.S. opinion. The former communist country is trying to influence American’s attitudes about genetically engineered crops and biotechnology, according to new Iowa State University research. Russia is funding articles shared online that question the …

NASHVILLE — It’s 2 in the morning, and it has just started to rain. It’s a gentle rain, with no threat of high winds or lightning. I know this without having to get up to peer into the dark night or put on my glasses to check the weather app on my phone. I know the facts of this meteorological reality without even …

I used to have this one-liner: “If you want to emasculate a guy friend, when you’re at a restaurant, ask him everything that he’s going to order, and then when the waitress comes … order for him.” It’s funny because it shouldn’t be that easy to rob a man of his masculinity — but it is. Last week, 17 people, most …