All Things Considered

Updated at 9:42 p.m. ET

Charles Krauthammer, the prominent Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post and commentator for the Fox News Channel, has died.

His death was confirmed by Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor for the Post. The cause of Krauthammer's death was cancer. He was 68.

Updated June 22 at 5:30 p.m. ET:

Tereza Lee is a music teacher and a concert pianist who is pursuing a Ph.D. at the Manhattan School of Music.

But Lee, who was born in Brazil to parents who fled South Korea in the wake of the Korean War, is also known for something else: She's the original inspiration behind the DREAM Act, the legislative effort to provide legal status to undocumented young people.

This essay isn't about spin, or splitting hairs, or differing opinions.

This involves a reality check about our expectations of the people who act in our name. About credibility at the highest levels of our government. About people whose words are heard abroad as speaking for our nation. About the public and the media that try, however imperfectly, to serve it.

Third grade teacher Tony Osumi says he, like a lot of Americans, watched the recent news from the Southern US border with growing dismay. The images and sounds of wailing children being pulled from their tearful parents' arms and taken away to temporary shelters made him wince—and reminded him of the first day of school for children who hadn't been before.

They're used to rushing, tackling, and taking hits in front of 65,000 screaming spectators. But it was a whole different ball game when three New England Patriots came to a much smaller stage at a middle school in Boston's inner city this week to challenge five candidates vying to be district attorney on how they'd make the criminal justice system more fair.

"[My] nervous level is pretty high right now," conceded player Matthew Slater, as the auditorium began to fill up. Each clutching a wad of notes, his teammates Jason and Devin McCourty, seemed to feel the same way.