For more than a generation, James Carville’s campaign maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid,” has been held up as an essential truth of American politics. There’s no denying that a strong economy is an incumbent president’s best friend. Seventy-three percent of voters currently rate ...

Dear Annie: My office mates and I enjoy a good prank as a way of keeping things light. Recently, a good friend of mine, “Jimmy,” went on an extended vacation with his family. I decided to do a prank I have long wanted to do: put his house up for sale. My wife, “Diana,” told me that I ...

The nation’s biggest meeting of cancer specialists unveiled several breakthroughs on Saturday. The horrible news is what’s not improving. Only a miniscule 4% of men and women at high risk of getting lung cancer from smoking go for a CT scan to detect it while it’s curable. That 4% figure ...

Dear Annie: Growing up, my siblings and I would make fun of my mom’s snoring all the time. To be fair, the noise seemingly could wake the dead; she sounded like she was sawing logs every night. Her snoring became one of our favorite family jokes, and to this day it’s brought up on a pretty ...

Elmo Cook knew nothing about it. He’d heard the sirens in the middle of the night alerting all of Abilene that something had happened, but when he tried to turn on the radio, he found that his power was out. And when he left for work in the morning, the paperboy had not yet made his ...

Dear Annie: I’m a mother to five beautiful children. I do not have custody of any of them. I’m an addict, and I refuse to raise my kids the way my parents raised me. I want them to have and see a better life than I did. Growing up wasn’t great for me. We were homeless. Sleeping in ...