One of the lingering — and potentially disastrous — effects of the COVID pandemic is that more parents are reluctant to have their children vaccinated against what used to be common childhood diseases, as well as against flu and the mutating coronavirus strains.

Jimmy Carter has secured a legacy as probably the greatest former president in modern American history. The former chief executive — whose one term is generally viewed as an almost unmitigated disaster — has spent his many post-presidential years promoting human rights and building houses for the underprivileged while living modestly in his Plains, Georgia, home. As Carter enters hospice there at age 98, his example of selfless public service should stand as a rebuke to many of today’s self-interested Democratic and Republican politicians, and an inspiration to a nation that lately has too few of them.

Right-wing politicians are on the warpath. They want to banish everything that is, as they call it, “woke.”

Elon Musk really likes bots — except, perhaps, when they’re cluttering Twitter. The also-CEO-of-Tesla likes them so much that he’s built “full self-driving” software that’s so unready for prime time, it just triggered the recall of 362,758 automobiles. (For the record, we love vehicle-assist safety technology keeping cars in their lane, avoiding collisions and so on, and we look forward to the time when true autopilot is a reality; that day, however, has not yet arrived.)

As bad as the pandemic was for student learning, if some current education fads continue, the future could be worse.

A public radio reporter in West Virginia was sacked after she reported on the abuse of people with disabilities in state-run facilities. Her report posed a political embarrassment for West Virginia’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, whose former senior aide is now the top executive at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. That ex-aide wound up firing the reporter. For the news-consuming public, this case serves as a warning sign of the dangers when news organizations fall under the control of political actors.

When the 1996 presidential campaign approached, Bill Clinton faced an uphill struggle to win a second term. His biggest legislative proposal, a sweeping health care bill, had failed. His party had lost the House of Representatives to Republicans led by a fiery conservative, Newt Gingrich. Clinton’s poll ratings were sagging.

California voters’ 2016 decision to legalize the recreational use of cannabis was mostly driven by the idea that whether or not to use the drug should be a choice left up to adults — not be dictated by laws written in an era in which “reefer madness” was seen as a societal scourge. But it was also sold in part as a smart way to create a large new revenue stream for local and state governments. While Gavin Newsom, then lieutenant governor and now governor, made this argument as one of the leading voices for the Proposition 64 campaign, he also offered some notes of caution. In a May 2018 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, he said he expected it would take “five to seven years to substantively address the black market.”

Democrats with presidential ambitions should be calculating how much longer they can defer to President Joe Biden.

The past few years have gotten us used to bad news from the Centers for Disease Control, and this week was more of the same, yet this time it had nothing to do with COVID. The agency’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that about one in three high-school age girls had seriously considered suicide, and detailed sharp upticks in sexual violence and overall mental health struggles.

Look at the faces of Michigan State University students as they ran down staircases, jumped behind low walls and barricaded themselves in dorms and classroom buildings when a gunman opened fire.

If you are like me, your notion of what it means to be successful in work or life changes over time. I’ve been participating in many conversations about success of late: What does success mean for our students at UH Hilo? What does success mean for our University? Our University System? Success for institutions certainly includes flourishing for all the individuals that make up our workforce and for the population we serve. But we have a lot of different notions about what success looks like and how to get there.

It looked like something out of a Hollywood sci-fi flick: the White House press secretary assuring a roomful of reporters that there is “no indication of aliens.” Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had to make that startling pronouncement this week because a top general had earlier declined to rule out the possibility that extraterrestrials are behind a string of mysterious objects the U.S. military has shot out of the sky lately.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s announcement Tuesday that she will not run for reelection next year is no surprise. At 89, Feinstein is the oldest sitting senator and California’s longest-serving senator. She has earned retirement.

There is something about the last two weeks of America’s intense focus on the threat posed by balloons that is reminiscent of the “Summer of the Shark” in 2001, when sensationalistic coverage of shark attacks whipped the nation into a frenzy — until a real disaster came along on Sept. 11.

It was barely six months ago that congressional Democrats voted to boost IRS funding by $80 billion over the next decade under the guise of beefing up tax enforcement and wringing more money out of billionaires and millionaires. Wage-earners of less means were assured they had little to worry about from an army of new agents.

Celia Cruz will be the first Afro-Latina American woman on American currency, the U.S. Mint reports. The Latina singer, originally from Cuba, was one of the most popular entertainers in the world. Her career spanned six decades and included more than 80 albums, many of which achieved gold or platinum status. She will appear on the quarter as a part of the American Women Quarters Project’s class of 2024.