Politics
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LZ Granderson: Biden is right to nudge Israel toward protecting civilians in Rafah
This week Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., delivered another classic grandstanding moment during a Senate budget hearing. Citing reports that President Joe Biden was pausing weapons shipments to Israel, Graham expressed his displeasure with his usual demonstrative hand gestures and a well-timed table slap. He even leaned back and licked his lips ...Read more
Editorial: The administrative state and the Bill of Rights
The administrative state continues to run amok under President Joe Biden.
Recently, a judge with the National Labor Relations Board found that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated federal labor law. His crime? Offering his opinion about the consequences of employees forming a union.
Jassy in April 2022 had the gall to tell a CNBC host that Amazon ...Read more
Tyler Cowen: No, low-skilled immigrants don't cost taxpayers money
It’s not often that Paul Krugman and Donald Trump agree. But the Nobel-prize-winning economist and former (and future?) president have both subscribed to the mainstream consensus that, in the short run, less skilled immigrants are a burden on public finances. They may receive government benefits, including health care, yet they are not always ...Read more
Commentary: Since the Hamas attack, Israelis have begun arming themselves the American way
Among the core Israeli national narratives that have been fractured by the Hamas terror attacks and months of war and violence is the notion that Israel’s ethos on firearms differs from that of the United States.
Both countries can be characterized as gun-centric democracies, but according to the Israeli narrative, the U.S. is a land of too ...Read more
Commentary: Have we learned nothing? The protester's taunt, 'Go back to Poland,' is grotesque
When it was reported that a demonstrator near Columbia University had loudly suggested that Jews should go back to Poland, I was already there. My wife, son and daughter and I were visiting Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe. My father’s family is from Poland and Ukraine, and many of our relatives perished in the Holocaust.
I don’t know if ...Read more
Editorial: Biden's limit on bomb shipments to Israel may finally get Netanyahu's attention
In quietly halting a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel last week, President Joe Biden at last began exercising U.S. leverage to halt a full-scale invasion of Rafah, the final refuge in Gaza for about a million Palestinians displaced by Israeli destruction elsewhere in the besieged territory.
It’s the right move, even though Israel may ...Read more
Patricia Lopez: Marjorie Taylor Greene finally got what she deserved: defeat
House Republicans delivered a much-needed, no-holds-barred rejection of Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s power grab on Wednesday, briskly voting down her attempt to oust Speaker Mike Johnson.
Her public shaming was far too long in coming. And it united a fractious GOP caucus who, with the aid of Democrats, had promised they ...Read more
Commentary: There should be less barriers for formerly incarcerated people
I’ve been to prison three times, but everyone — including me — thought that my second time would be my last. I had just learned I was pregnant a few days before I was incarcerated for drug possession. I spent my entire pregnancy in jail and gave birth to my first child there. We had two days together before I was separated from him and ...Read more
Editorial: Of course the death penalty is racist. And it would be wrong even if it weren't
Civil rights organizations and defense attorneys last month asked the California Supreme Court to invalidate the death penalty in this state for being irredeemably racist. Around the same time, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that a federal judge had ordered her to review 35 cases her office had handled over the last ...Read more
Tyler Cowen: No, low-skilled immigrants don't cost taxpayers money
It’s not often that Paul Krugman and Donald Trump agree. But the Nobel-prize-winning economist and former (and future?) president have both subscribed to the mainstream consensus that, in the short run, less skilled immigrants are a burden on public finances. They may receive government benefits, including health care, yet they are not always ...Read more
Patricia Murphy: How lonely COVID death of lawmaker's mother inspired new law
Of the many heartbreaks and hellish outcomes that the COVID era delivered, few compare to the experience that Georgia state Rep. Matt Hatchett and so many others had when they dropped ailing loved ones off at the doors of their local emergency room, never to see them again.
On the day Hatchett said goodbye to his mother in November of 2020, new...Read more
Commentary: Let's fix our presidential primaries with ranked-choice voting
Fifteen states are holding presidential primaries this April and May. And at a time when party polarization seems stronger than ever, Donald Trump and Joe Biden voters seem to agree on at least one question: What’s the point?
The Washington Post found that only about one in 10 voters nationwide took part in a primary or caucus through Super ...Read more
Commentary: Was Sweden's COVID-19 approach superior to that of the US?
COVID-19 cases and deaths internationally have fallen to their lowest levels in four years. The data now permits a comparison between the controversial laissez faire strategy of Sweden and the more restrictive approach of the United States, which emphasized lockdowns, a strategy also adopted by most of Western Europe.
The Swedish tack relied on...Read more
Editorial: A race to the bottom in Florida teacher pay
Give dunce caps to the Florida Legislature for flunking one of life’s most obvious lessons.
It’s this: Experience really is the best teacher. That goes double for teachers themselves.
There’s no college prep or other shortcut to knowing what works best with each student and with a classroom as a whole. Teachers learn that only from their...Read more
Commentary: As we send our babies to college, do we do enough to celebrate the village that raised them?
I’m sending my baby to college in a few minutes.
Fine, a few months.
It feels like minutes.
It has all felt like minutes. She was born five minutes ago. She started walking five minutes ago. She stopped napping five minutes ago. She started driving five minutes ago. She turned me into a whole new person with a whole new, very full, very ...Read more
George Skelton: Expect campus uprisings to cause headaches for Democrats this election
Don't be surprised if these annoying protests on college campuses turn out bad for Democrats. They usually do.
If history is any guide, Republicans will capitalize on the divided Democrats' perceived weakness and appear to be the stronger party in November.
Already, Donald Trump seems to have benefited from the heavy news media focus on pro-...Read more
Mark Z. Barabak: He lost by 5 votes and conceded graciously. Trump could learn something here
Joe Simitian long had his eye on a seat in Congress. It would have been a fine way to cap his 40-year political career.
"I viewed it as an opportunity to improve the lives of the people I represent in a different way at a different level," the Silicon Valley Democrat said.
Little did he know.
On election night, March 5, Simitian was running ...Read more
Commentary: Did Stormy Daniels' testimony help or hurt the case against Trump? It's complicated
When Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger announced on Tuesday, the 13th day of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, that “the people call Stormy Daniels,” there was a perceptible tremor of anticipation among the jurors. Although the 34 criminal offenses charged against Trump are legally peripheral to his interactions with the...Read more
Mary McNamara: This Mother's Day, forget the cards and flowers. Women want their rights instead
When I was young, my father gave me one piece of advice about choosing a career: Stay away from any occupation with a national “appreciation” day.
As a public high school teacher, he believed that those days were a performative substitute for fair wages and social respect.
So what, by that logic, are we to make of Mother’s Day?
I’ve ...Read more
Frank Barry: 'Civil War' is a gift to Trump's opponents
Alex Garland’s box office hit, Civil War, which is set in a future America at war with itself, has drawn lots of criticism for not telling audiences what caused the conflict — and for its refusal to more realistically portray the battle lines that divide Red and Blue America. That critique not only gets the movie wrong, in my view, but it’...Read more