6 of our top opinion pieces this week: ICYMI

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've started in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.

— USA TODAY Opinion editors

1. 'Boy crisis' threatens America's future with economic, health and suicide risks

By Warren Farrell

"Dad-deprivation is a significant predictor of the increasing rate of male suicide, drug overdose, obesity and withdrawal into video game addiction. It even predicts by age 9 a shorter life expectancy as determined by shorter telomeres, protective end caps of chromosomes. Aggregately, this leads to my predicting that the biggest gap between boys who are successful and unsuccessful in the future will be the gap between those who are dad-enriched versus dad-deprived."

2. Trump's cognitive deficits seem worse. We need to know if he has dementia: Psychologist

By John Gartner

"Trump's speech patterns appear even more disordered when you go beyond the sound bite and look at a whole speech. He careens from one thought to the next in a parade of non sequiturs, frequently interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence to veer into another free association. When commentators described his two-hour  speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month as 'unhinged,' they were referring in large part to this quality. ... Americans have a right, indeed an urgent need, to know whether their president is suffering from dementia."

3. I'm married. I'm also autistic. But being on the spectrum has made me a better husband.

By Zack Budryk

"Occasionally people react with surprise when they hear that I'm on the autism spectrum and have been married for nearly seven years, and I'm not sure why that is. In a lot of ways, a wedding is the ideal setting for a person on the spectrum: everything is choreographed and planned, you’re wearing an outfit you like regardless of its practicality and, depending on where you go for your honeymoon, there might even be some train travel involved. The wedding, of course, is the easy part. A marriage tends to lack the predictability and fixed routine that many autistic people find so comforting."

4. WikiLeaks-founder Julian Assange will be punished for embarrassing the DC establishment

By Jonathan Turley

"The criminal charge against Assange filed in Alexandria federal court was crafted to circumvent the obvious constitutional problems in prosecuting him. The charge is revealing. He is charged with a single count for his alleged involvement in the hacking operation of Chelsea Manning in 2010. By alleging that Assange actively played a role in the hacking operation, the government is seeking to portray him as part of the theft rather than the distribution of the information. The prosecutors say that Assange helped Manning secure a password to gain access to additional information. If true, that would be a step that most media organizations would not take."

5. I don't want Justice Brett Kavanaugh teaching at my alma mater

By Zach Eisenstein

"Imagine the harm that the hiring of Kavanaugh, a man who caused a nation of survivors to relive their trauma, might cause for students at the university he has just been welcomed into. Following the infamous Kavanaugh hearings, The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network reported a 338% increase in hotline traffic and marked Friday, Sept. 28, 2018 — the day after the hearing — as the single busiest day in the National Sexual Assault Hotline's 24-year history. To assume that seeing Kavanaugh on campus won't spark a similar response for students would be a gross misjudgment."

6. Prosecutors wield way too much power. And their misconduct brings far too few consequences

By Christian Watson

"During grand jury hearings, prosecutors should present a balanced case, which would include some evidence that could exonerate the accused (and in some states is required to do so). However, on the federal level (and in a number of other states), prosecutors aren't compelled to present exonerating evidence by anything but principle. The scariest part is the rate at which federal grand juries indict: 99.9% of the time. State grand juries are a mixed bag."