Over the course of 150 years, profound statements can morph into clichés that lose their punch. So it is with this poetic line by William Ross Wallace, penned in 1865: "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."

Jackson Ndegwa, a child health and development expert in Nairobi, Kenya, might have you look at it a little differently. A nation whose mothers rock the cradles of children who die before the age of 5 from preventable diseases, or who suffer the long-term affects those diseases have on development, won’t 

My wife and I used to frequent a certain Chinese restaurant, in part because of a particular server.

He was a pleasant man with a quick smile and helpful menu suggestions. Also, he was a refugee from Cambodia, and his story was so compelling that, the first time we heard it, we stayed long after our meal was done to listen to him.

He told of escaping through the jungle. He described the leaky boat he and his family used to 

If you’re planning to speed, turn without signaling or commit some other minor offense, make sure you don’t have a lot of cash on hand.

As strange as that sentence may sound, the nation is brimming with stories of drivers who end up losing their money through routine traffic stops, even though they haven’t been convicted of a crime.

Take the example of George Reby, a New Jersey resident who got pulled over in Tennessee for 

Well, this is a switch.

For at least a half century, if people in America spoke of election results at all, it tended to be about how they were coming in too quickly.

Remember all that talk about folks on the West coast deciding to turn the car around and head home rather than vote after the radio told them which presidential candidate was projected to win?Remember all the anger over exit pollsters hovering around polling locations, anxious to ask people for whom they voted?

It turns out there was one thing all those angry people never took into consideration, and that was 

It didn’t take long Wednesday morning before my inbox began to fill with messages from interest groups explaining the real message voters sent nationwide on Tuesday.

Forget how Ohio destroyed an effort to legalize marijuana, one of them said. (Although keeping the weed illegal is one good way to make people forget a lot of things.) The real message is that voters are tired of big money politics.

That’s why Seattle residents decided to give $100 vouchers to every voter, which in turn may be donated to the candidate of his or her choice. It’s why Ohio voters decided to create a bipartisan commission to redraw political boundaries.

Not so, said others. The real message came from Kentucky, where newly elected governor Matt Bevin showed the tea party is alive and well and a force with which to reckon in 2016. Bevin is the first tea 

We don’t yet have all the facts. All we have is what Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder told the Deseret News. But that alone should be enough to give anyone pause before piling on in what seems like a national obsession against police who use force.

Yes, a sheriff’s deputy shot the wrong man Friday night.

Apparently, 30-year-old Dustin Evans was just washing his car at the Rocket Express Car Wash in