“Like everyone, and I’d say especially like every parent, I am of course saddened and horrified by the latest mass shooting-murder. My sympathies to all,” James Fallows, a longtime correspondent for this magazine, wrote nearly a decade ago on July 20, 2012. That day, a gunman had opened fire on theater-goers in Aurora, Colorado. A dozen people were dead.

Thoughts and prayers. It began as a cliché. It became a joke. It has putrefied into a national shame.If tonight, Americans do turn heavenward in pain and grief for the lost children of Uvalde, Texas, they may hear the answer delivered in the Bible through the words of Isaiah:“And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

“White House Walks Back Biden Taiwan Defense Claim for Third Time in Nine Months” was the patronizing headline the New York Post applied to its report on President Joe Biden’s Taiwan comments at a regional summit in Tokyo. The story line was preset: semi-senile president blurts unscripted comment, is corrected by his staff minders.But if you reread Biden’s repeated comments on Taiwan, you see a policy that is clear, considered, and consistent.

I never attended Ranger School, the U.S. Army’s nine weeks of unadulterated misery in woodland, mountain, and swamp. But I know plenty of those who have, and they have all reported the same thing: The instruction they received in patrolling and minor tactics was insignificant compared with the lesson they learned in perseverance, to “complete the mission though I be the lone survivor,” in the words of the Ranger Creed.

Sign up for Molly’s newsletter, Wait, What?, here.The teenagers are not all right, but then again, neither are the adults. Pandemic life has been profoundly jarring, and every generation has felt it. I hear about people fighting on airplanes and an increase in violent crimes, then I attend my Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on Zoom and try to figure out why going back to “normal” is so hard.

The ACLU Has Lost Its Way“The ACLU now seems largely unable or unwilling to uphold its core values,” wrote Lara Bazelon earlier this month, arguing that the civil-liberties organization has neglected its central purpose of defending freedom of speech without partisanship in favor of a broad embrace of progressive causes.Lara Bazelon accuses the American Civil Liberties Union of having lost its way. We have not.

Kaitlyn: I need to be careful so you don’t think I’m speaking hyperbolically. These are my real feelings: Coney Island is heaven on earth. I think if “they” ever touched it—if they ever tore things down and put boring things in their place—that would be it for me. My heart would be broken.