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What Biden has and, maybe just as importantly, has not done
President Biden has announced he will be cutting or eliminating student loan debt for millions of Americans. It’s the latest in a growing list of tangible, beneficial achievements by his administration. One of the best ways to assess what President Biden has accomplished since taking office is to put his administration’s achievements into context — […]
The key question for the January 6 committee, and all Americans: Is anyone above the law?
I was about four or five when I witnessed corruption for the first time. I was standing on the back seat of our car — not safe, but common back then — when my great uncle got pulled over by a traffic cop in Tampico, Mexico. At some point, the cop let my mom and […]
Yes, we should control who gets to own a gun and how they use it
As I sat down to write about the mass shooting that left 19 children and three adults dead in Uvalde, Texas, it occurred to me that they hadn’t even finished burying the 13 people killed by a white supremacist in the gun massacre a week before in Buffalo, N.Y. That’s how good we’ve gotten at […]
Overturning Roe v. Wade, part of the ‘war on women,’ will leave blood on the hands of the GOP
There’s a reason the Declaration of Independence reads “all men are created equal” and not “all men and women are created equal.” Simply stated, the Founding Founders were all white guys who didn’t think women were their equals. In fact, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution after that, basically regarded women […]
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess the name of my latest variant
Hi. Remember me? No, no, wait! Don’t be afraid. We met a couple of years ago. January 20, 2020, to be exact. Snohomish County, Washington. Just north of Seattle. I know it’s been a while, but it’s not an easy day to forget. I remember every detail: You wore blue and I, well, not to […]
Bending the moral arc of the universe, one achievement at a time
There are days, now more than ever in my life, when I don’t really know what direction “the arc of the moral universe” is bending. On March 31, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting a 19th-century abolitionist and minister named Theodore Parker, used those words in what would regrettably be his final Sunday […]
The world’s latest wartime monument to human cruelty: Mariupol
Don’t look away. I know it’s hard to watch reports of the genocide unfolding in Ukraine. But the only thing worse would be to shrug and look away, to treat it all as just another tragic story about a distant and abstract horror that has little if anything to do with our everyday lives. Nothing […]
Only NATO can staunch the bloodbath in Ukraine — and it must
It’s time for NATO to do more than remain on the sidelines as Russian President Vladimir Putin slaughters the Ukrainian people. Putin has made clear he’s not going to end Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine until the fledgling democracy is brought to its knees, even if that means wiping out Ukraine’s decisively outgunned defense […]
Here’s the real state of the union
Listening to President Biden Tuesday night, I wasn’t so much waiting to see if he’d make news as much as I was hoping he’d say something — anything — that wasn’t aimed at helping the Democrats win the November’s midterm elections. Without that win, the president’s agenda could be stopped in its tracks. It’s not […]
What do we care if Putin invades Ukraine? What if we don’t?
“War, children It’s just a shot away. It’s just a shot away.” — Rolling Stones The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the ensuing and needless slaughter of thousands of soldiers and civilians, seems all but inevitable now. “So, what do I care?” some of us may be asking ourselves. “It’s not our fight.” I […]
Census undercount and a biased redistricting process may curb AZ Latinos’ growing political clout
It wasn’t so long ago that Latino leaders in Arizona were predicting the community was poised to make major strides in growing its political influence across the state. Most observers thought the results of the 2020 Census would show the state’s Latino population wasn’t just growing fast, but also becoming a bigger share of Arizona’s […]
Sens. Sinema and Manchin, are these daggers I see before you?
Senate Democrats this week, 48 out of 50 of them at least, are set to vote on a bill aimed at crippling the Republicans’ now full-bore assault on voting rights in America. But the Democrats, 48 out of 50 of them, will almost certainly fail to rally the backing they need to pass the measure. […]