Commentary
How to manufacture a humanitarian catastrophe
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen this week, as The New York Times put it, “implored Congress to confront” what she called a growing humanitarian catastrophe on the U.S.-Mexico border. Under normal circumstances and under a normal presidential administration, Nielsen’s entreaty might well have seemed appropriate or even compassionate. Then again, this is someone […]
Bipartisanship promise proves to be empty rhetoric
We’ve seen once again that “bipartisanship” was nothing more than empty jargon from a party that is losing support across the state.
Arizona should be ashamed that heavily minority districts are being shorted $129M
Arizona actually notched the highest ranking in a new national study of school districts. Unfortunately, it is cause for embarrassment instead of celebration
Does Bill Montgomery know enough about justice to be one?
He has exactly five years’ experience prosecuting cases — those years are not contiguous — and many of the most serious cases he tried were motor-vehicle offenses.
The legislature lacks courage for real charter reform, despite outcry
It seems the charter school industry is far too powerful and legislators are far too chicken to seriously consider real charter school reform.
The faces of immigrants are everywhere
Contrary to widely mistaken popular belief, immigrants and the profound role they play in U.S. society are not confined to those grainy images Fox News loves to run with the inflammatory “Battle at the Border” logo it routinely plasters on stories about immigration.
Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy. Why do some legislators want it to be harder to vote?
It’s Election Day, and all over the country, people are casting their ballots, based on a principle as simple as it is radical: no matter who you are or where you live, if you’re eligible, you have the right to vote.
In Their Own Words: What These South Florida Shooting Survivors Want You to Know
We must become an America that is compassionate, one that doesn’t have to teach children to hide from a bullet before they can read, and one that values innocent lives over a piece of metal with a primary purpose to kill.
Republicans can’t straddle the wall much longer
There’s a wall in our politics right now, both symbolic and literal, and it threatens to divide America in ways we haven’t seen in more than a century.
The never-ending legislative crusade against your right to self-governance
If there is one constant in a legislative session, it’s this: Republican legislators and the special interests that back them are contemptuous of you, the voter, and will work to undermine your rights to have any say in how you are governed beyond merely electing officials to represent you.
Partisanship threatens to derail bipartisan criminal justice reform bills
Our democracy rests upon a system of checks and balances. The whole point is to prevent concentrations of power in one or a few persons that thwart the will of the people. Yet that is exactly what we are witnessing with respect to criminal justice reform here in Arizona.
Trump’s State of the Union, another kick in the head
To paraphrase a certain red-faced, golden-haired president with a gift for Orwellian rhetoric who delivered a State of the Union address Tuesday night, what you saw and what he said was not what was happening. Okay, what you saw actually did happen. It’s the part about what he said that’s highly dubious. After two years […]