Politics
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Commentary: My childhood home in Glendale cost $8,500 in 1954. What it's worth now is madness
A favorite family tale goes something like this: In the early 1980s my uncle, the son of working-class Norwegian immigrants, was nervously heading home to Glendale for the first time with his girlfriend, also a child of immigrants, but ones of considerable self-made wealth. My uncle likes to joke that his rich girlfriend (now my aunt) surely ...Read more

America's Army: 'Equitable' but not combat-ready
Americans are used to picturing Army combat soldiers as incredibly tough individuals, able to run faster and do more pushups than most people. In today’s Army, though that notion is officially passé. At a recent Senate hearing, we learned that Army physical fitness has been sacrificed on the altar of gender equity, a move that former ...Read more

Commentary: My childhood home in Glendale cost $8,500 in 1954. What it's worth now is madness
A favorite family tale goes something like this: In the early 1980s my uncle, the son of working-class Norwegian immigrants, was nervously heading home to Glendale for the first time with his girlfriend, also a child of immigrants, but ones of considerable self-made wealth. My uncle likes to joke that his rich girlfriend (now my aunt) surely ...Read more

Jonathan Bernstein: Biden stuck up for democracy in Buffalo
President Joe Biden spoke in Buffalo on Tuesday after visiting the families of victims of a racist mass shooting in a supermarket there on Saturday. It was a speech that’s likely to get lost in the current-events shuffle, but it shouldn’t. It was a good one, well written and well delivered, and hitting on the necessary themes of combating ...Read more

Editorial: As grim pandemic milestone arrives, GOP still plays politics with the crisis
Even as America topped a million coronavirus deaths on Monday, congressional Republicans continued playing games with vaccine funding, holding it up over an unrelated immigration debate. The same short-sighted politics are also preventing the U.S. from pledging funding to an international effort that would ultimately help prevent resurgences ...Read more

Commentary: The end of Roe means we'll be criminalized for more of our data
Our phones know more about us than our families and friends do. They know what we watch, what we’ve searched for and whom we’ve emailed, not just recently but stretching back months and years. The leak of a draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn Roe v. Wade raises huge concerns for how online searches, text ...Read more

Commentary: I hid my pregnancy from the internet so I know: Online privacy is nearly impossible
More than 2.5 million unintended pregnancies were reported in the U.S. between 2014 and 2019. Many of those women probably read pregnancy articles online, browsed Planned Parenthood’s website, triple-checked their period tracker or confided in their best friend over Facebook Messenger. If Roe v. Wade is struck down this summer, as the leaked ...Read more

Editorial: Texas is the king of energy states. Why can't we be sure the power will stay on?
Ah, the rituals of a Texas summer: A run through the sprinklers. A hot grill and a cold beer. A trip to Dairy Queen.
Add to that cranking up the thermostat, frantically shutting off electronics and staying up until midnight to get laundry and dishes done, thanks to our increasingly questionable power supply. Not just in this unseasonably hot ...Read more

Editorial: Biden administration has just propped up Cuba's failing dictatorship. Thanks, Mr. President
In a single move, President Joe Biden just gave Cuba’s aging, creaky regime new oxygen to continue to exist, living on to oppress those who oppose it on the island.
It knocked the wind out of the Patria y Vida movement, which staged huge protests against the regime across the country last June.
And, apparently, none of this will necessarily ...Read more

LZ Granderson: The stories we will tell ourselves about the shooting in Buffalo
The real estate agent told me she was born and raised in Texas. Knowledgeable and full of warmth, she embodied all the honey sweet southern charm country stars like Morgan Wallen sing about.
I went to San Antonio to explore the city and came upon a 112-year old estate for sale. Though I wasn't interested in buying the house, I was interested in...Read more

Editorial: Lagging flags: Opportunities to flag Buffalo shooter came and went
An unseen flag signifies nothing: Ships at sea don’t hoist their flags below deck. The same rule applies, or should, to the red flags codified by New York’s Extreme Risk Protection Order law, whereby people, including teachers and family members, can petition a court to signal law enforcement and firearm sellers that an individual may well ...Read more

Commentary: Recent shooting exposes Buffalo's deep-seated history of segregation
A true Buffalonian knows certain things. A good snowstorm brings out the best in a person. Strangers will dig each other out. There is no better sandwich than beef on weck. Next year will be the Bills’ year.
The heart-wrenching violence that occurred at Tops Friendly Market exposes a painfully deep truth. The early to mid-20th century promise...Read more

Mark Z. Barabak: Day after day of gun violence in America. Nothing changes
"Nothing changed after moviegoers were slaughtered in Aurora. Nothing changed after children were massacred in Newtown, after worshipers were killed inside a church in Charleston, after office workers were mowed down at a holiday party in San Bernardino."
I wrote those words in June 2017, after Republican members of Congress were attacked by a ...Read more

Nicholas Goldberg: California's law requiring women on corporate boards was just struck down. I'm glad
The state Legislature's heavy-handed efforts to mandate diversity in California's corporate boardrooms have been dealt a second blow in just a few weeks.
Last month, Judge Terry A. Green of Los Angeles Superior Court overturned the law mandating that every public corporation in California have at least two members of specific "underrepresented"...Read more

Frank Shyong: Treating mass shootings as political discourse only gives killers more influence
A series of shootings over the weekend have once again left us all reeling and searching for answers in the aftermath.
Ten people died in what authorities are calling a racially motivated shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday. The shooter targeted a Black neighborhood and left a trail of white supremacist statements for ...Read more

Commentary: Midwives have been a revelation for moms--and for this obstetrician
As a California obstetrician, I never interacted with nurse midwives, and could only nod my head in agreement when my colleagues voiced leeriness about working with them. After all, the buck stops with the doc, and we feared that midwives’ clinical decisions would lead to traumatic deliveries and bad outcomes. I’d heard the cautionary tales ...Read more

Gustavo Arellano: I'm part of the 'Great Replacement.' It's not what believers say it is
Twenty-three years ago on a hot August evening, I stood before the Anaheim Union High School District board of trustees. They were about to discuss whether to sue Mexico for $50 million and ask the country for an annual $10 million payment for educating the children of undocumented immigrants.
Children like me.
Board president Harald Martin, a...Read more

Dan Rodricks: Our nation needs more immigrants, fewer race baiters
White Americans who worry about being replaced by immigrants and other people of color need to get a grip on reality. The “great replacement theory,” along with general immigrant anxiety, not only perpetuates racist paranoia but works against our nation’s economic health.
If you don’t care about the former — the paranoia that leads to...Read more

Editorial: Attacking the twin demons of violence in downtown Chicago
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has two issues to deal with simultaneously and urgently when it comes to what transpired over the lousy past weekend downtown in Millennium Park, where a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot near the sculpture colloquially known as The Bean.
One issue is the aching reality of the loss of life of a 16-year-old Chicagoan and the ...Read more

Editorial: After Buffalo, we all must resist the mainstreaming of hate
Ten people were murdered at a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday by an alleged white supremacist who believed in the "great replacement theory," an absurd racist ideology that claims there is a plot to replace white Americans with people of color.
It is yet another massacre fueled by a formerly fringe belief that has found a mainstream foothold ...Read more