Politics
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Editorial: Execution despite doubt over guilt is a perversion of justice
The execution of Robert Roberson in Texas remains on track for Thursday, despite serious doubts that he killed or even mistreated his 2-year-old daughter in 2002.
Prosecutors and medical experts insisted at trial that the child’s head trauma was evidence that Roberson had physically abused her. But now the detective who testified against him ...Read more
F.D. Flam: It's getting harder to study fake news
Researchers who study misinformation are confronting a new problem: public scorn. And it’s not just in the form of online trolling. These scientists are losing funding, watching their research centers close down, and getting barraged with subpoenas.
Given the rapid changes to news, social media and information sharing, you’d think there’...Read more
Mary Ellen Klas: Why Trump is winning with some Georgia immigrants
One of every four residents of Gwinnett County, Georgia, was born outside the United States. That’s nearly double the national average, and those numbers keep growing in this metro Atlanta area, which is home to a richly diverse community of Latin, Asian and European immigrants.
It’s also a community that can’t be pigeonholed when it ...Read more
Commentary: Why California's legacy admissions ban won't help low-income students go to college
I’ve been critiquing the calls to end legacy college admissions for about two decades — clearly to no avail, given California’s new law prohibiting private higher education institutions from considering applicants’ family connections to alumni or donors. (The state’s public universities already refrain from legacy admissions.) Maryland...Read more
Commentary: Why are we so obsessed with cease-fires?
War is never a good thing, but as terrible as it is to say, sometimes it is necessary. It is understandable that once a war begins, the horror of human suffering that always comes with it leads many well-intentioned people to think that anything that might stop the fighting — even for a short time — is good. Wouldn’t a cease-fire help — ...Read more
Editorial: Message to Washington -- It's the spending, stupid!
The Biden-Harris administration wants the public to believe the country is in great shape economically. Yet the budget deficit tells a story of unsustainable spending.
In the past fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, the federal government doled out $1.83 trillion more than it took in. That red ink boosted the national debt to well more than $...Read more
Editorial: Project 2025 offers a chilling preview of Trump's autocratic plans for a second term
While Donald Trump did lasting damage during his first term in office, the method to his madness was often scattershot. But a more devious and systemic plan awaits if Trump wins a second term.
It’s all spelled out in Project 2025, a detailed blueprint to strip away freedoms and turn the federal government into a Christian nationalist ...Read more
Editorial: Another Dream: DACA holders' fate once again in judges' hands
Once more, the Federal Court of Appeals in New Orleans is weighing the fate of more than a half million so-called Dreamers covered by the DACA program, who’ve been able to avoid deportation and receive work authorization through the now-12-year-old program. It’s the second time this case, brought by Texas and other states, comes before the ...Read more
Commentary: Where both presidential candidates' tax promises go wrong
Voters are understandably perplexed by Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic agenda, on which her campaign has offered little substance and little more than a string of vague promises.
But when you follow the policy breadcrumbs, the vice president’s intentions become clear: She plans a continuation of the same economic policies we’ve ...Read more
Matthew Brooker: Hurricanes and other disasters will help shape our future cities
The future of post-disaster reconstruction may run through an ancient metropolis founded by a general of Alexander the Great. The city of Antakya, known in antiquity as Antioch, was devastated last year in the strongest earthquakes to strike Turkey in more than eight decades. The consortium behind a masterplan to rebuild the city hopes it will ...Read more
Commentary: Why Trump and RFK Jr. won't 'make America healthy again'
In the first four minutes of a recent video for his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign promoting Donald Trump for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presents a seemingly compelling case about how America’s toxin-laden food system harms us and, worse, our children, contributing to chronic and often fatal diseases. He features unhealthy ...Read more
Commentary: The high stakes of skipping your yearly COVID-19 shot
Every parent wants to keep their family safe. We want our children to be healthy and enjoy the activities and milestones of adolescence. We yearn to grow old alongside our partners and to celebrate many more birthdays and holidays with our own parents.
This deep-seated desire for safety and togetherness spurred many of us into action when the ...Read more
Commentary: Dominant technology is harming women, and alternatives are starved for resources
There is an implicit war underway within the tech world between good and, if not quite “evil,” then at least “not good.” Good is not winning because it’s massively outgunned.
Nowhere is this easier to see than in the exploitation and harming of women.
Big Tech is making a fortune in ways that are not obviously in the best interests ...Read more
Commentary: Is 'just war' just?
As rockets are once again streaking across the skies of the Middle East and the cries of the bereaved echo through its ravaged streets, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words and teachings reverberate like a mournful prayer in my spirit. They stir within me a deep sociopolitical and theological question, "Is 'just war' just?”
In this ongoing...Read more
Francis Wilkinson: Can Liz Cheney break through to Republican voters?
Democracy’s prodigal daughters appeared together last Wednesday night on a stage in politically potent Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In a charming old neighborhood theater in the small town of Glenside, former Representative Liz Cheney was joined by former Trump White House staffers Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah ...Read more
Commentary: Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a model for blurred lines
It is rare to find issues that bridge partisan lines and unite Americans across the ideological spectrum. Breast Cancer Awareness Month stands as a powerful exception.
Observed annually in October, BCAM has evolved from grassroots beginnings into a global movement, reshaping our understanding of breast cancer and, in the process, demonstrating ...Read more
Leonard Greene: The generosity and grace of Ethel Kennedy, a down-to-earth matriarch
Joe, the congressman, was the charming one. His uncle, Ted, the senator, was the persuasive one. And Jackie, of course, was the regal one.
But if I had to pick a favorite Kennedy — and there have been a lot to choose from — it would have to be Ethel.
Of all the Kennedys who have made the news for decades and generations, Ethel Kennedy, the...Read more
Editorial: After storms, climate change takes center stage in presidential race
The United States isn’t prepared for a future shaped by the climate crisis. That includes Hampton Roads, where rising seas and sinking land conspire to deliver more frequent and more destructive flooding with each passing year.
There are other important issues shaping political campaigns this year, from the economy to immigration, but few ...Read more
Editorial: Walz runs defense for socialism shoutout
For a former social studies teacher, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz missed the lessons of the 2020 presidential election.
“One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness,” Walz said in a “White Dudes for Harris” livestream in July.
It was a knucklehead move.
Two days after the 2020 election, in which Democrats won the White ...Read more
Jackie Calmes: The GOP assault on election integrity has already begun
If you needed just one fact to show that in the world's greatest democracy one of the two major parties is perversely devoted to suppressing and even subverting the vote, you couldn't do better than this: The senior counsel for the Republican National Committee's "election integrity team" — Orwellian doublespeak come to life — is a criminal ...Read more