Politics
/ArcaMax
Commentary: How farming can turn carbon from a climate threat into an asset
Over the last two decades, my mother has devoted herself to creating a small homestead farm in upstate New York. I’ve had a front-row seat to the tribulations and glories of raising a large flock of chickens, starting an orchard and cultivating an expansive vegetable garden.
Up with the sun, endlessly shoveling poop, endlessly weeding, ...Read more
Editorial: Protect Florida abortion rights by voting Yes on Amendment 4
Americans want a middle ground on abortion, and they rightly believe that medical decisions should be left to patients and their doctors, not the government. By approving Amendment 4, Florida voters can return that balanced medical and legal environment to the Sunshine State.
Amendment 4 states that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or...Read more
Commentary: New poll reminds us that the rule of law is on the ballot
On Sept. 17, the highly regarded World Justice Project released a detailed report reflecting some major good news amidst a continuing modest slide in Americans’ trust in our institutions. Encouragingly, WJP’s survey of voters shows that more than 90 percent of Americans in both parties — an unheard-of polling number — believe that ...Read more
Lisa Jarvis: Oregon had a bold plan to help drug addicts. Then fentanyl showed up
This month, a brief, ambitious and many would say calamitous experiment came to an end: Oregon rolled back Measure 110, its policy decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. Rather than handing out small fines with a nudge towards treatment, the police are once again giving misdemeanors to people who are found with opioids...Read more
Mary Ellen Klas: Republicans don't trust voters on abortion
Over a decade ago, when political parties didn’t treat their rivals as mortal enemies, the Republican president of the Florida Senate, Jeff Atwater, would remind his colleagues: “Don’t fear the debate.”
I remember them as simple words uttered as tensions mounted during particularly contentious partisan disagreements. But anyone with a ...Read more
Michael Hiltzik: The Pentagon's former top UFO hunter talks about COVID-19, Haitian pet-eaters and pseudoscience generally
Trained as a physicist, Sean M. Kirkpatrick has spent most of his career in government, much of it as an intelligence and technology expert for various Pentagon agencies, culminating in an 18-month stint as the government's lead investigator of UFOs.
It was in that latter position — as the first director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly ...Read more
Editorial: Anti-immigrant lies won't save Charleroi, but immigrants might
It was always a given that dehumanizing rhetoric around immigration would intensify as the presidential election approached. Unfortunately, in the turn to dangerous lies about established communities of immigrants in American towns, it has gotten much worse — and, in Western Pennsylvania, closer to home — than even most cynics expected.
...Read more
Andreas Kluth: Kim Jong Un will have his October surprise
Say you’re a ruthless narcissist and a natural-born dictator, and you’re reviewing footage of this month’s presidential debate in Philadelphia. It’s obvious that you got far too little time during the sparring, and inspired not nearly as much fear and awe as are your due. So you decide to spring your “October surprise.”
I’m not ...Read more
Editorial: Stopping political violence requires common decency
As investigators sort through what appears to be a second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last weekend, partisans are predictably blaming each other for incendiary rhetoric and extremist politics. One thing that might ease the tension is for the two presidential candidates to keep doing what they’ve been doing in recent ...Read more
F.D. Flam: We just got a wake-up call from the time before dinosaurs
Scientists have pieced together enough clues to Earth’s past climate to graph the average temperature from 485 million years ago to the present — back to a time long before dinosaurs and even trees, when the land was either barren or hosted mostly moss, millipedes and primitive insects. This new work shows temperatures spent hundreds of ...Read more
Commentary: Is the devil you know better than the devil you don't when voting?
The 2024 election is shaping up to be a “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know" kind of contest.
That saying is rooted in ambiguity aversion bias. Even if a situation is bad, individuals would rather stay with what they know rather than face uncertainty.
So it goes with our presidential nominees, Vice President Kamala ...Read more
Editorial: Getting it right: Weinstein charges require careful prosecution
Since the avalanche of accusations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017, we’ve always suspected that there were probably more incidents of sexual misconduct against the former movie power player than were publicly acknowledged.
Now, one more such allegation has come to light in the form of a new indictment against him, involving a purported ...Read more
Commentary: Make Social Security the model to fix the minimum wage
One of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree on these days is that it’s past time to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years. Vice President Kamala Harris supported President Joe Biden’s effort at the beginning of his administration to increase it to $15. Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio...Read more
Editorial: For a better justice system, Florida should legalize recreational marijuana. Here's why
The way Florida handles low-level marijuana possession is ineffective, destructive, racially biased and detached from modern sentiment. It’s a good thing voters have a chance to rectify all that in the Nov. 5 election. Legalizing adult-use recreational marijuana can’t get here soon enough. Our justice system snares too many otherwise law-...Read more
Commentary: Nobody's ever talked the way Trump does. It's like no one before. Or so it seems
Of all Donald Trump’s rhetorical predilections, one that goes largely unmentioned is his addiction to superlatives. No one has ever seen anything like virtually everything he brings up. Why does he do this? And what does it reveal?
Much of the disinformation in Trump’s nonstop perjuries comes in the form of gross, almost comic exaggeration:...Read more
Martin Schram: Searching for a lost truth
URGENT. Attention must be paid. The world’s leaders and chroniclers, who have wasted a year flailing but failing to fully recognize what really happened on Oct. 7 and ever since, have just one last chance to finally get it right.
We are talking imperatively today to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, President Joe Biden and ...Read more
Editorial: Lying low: Vance and Trump know they are spreading dangerous lies about Springfield
A week ago, the city of Springfield, Ohio, entered the national consciousness as a place where supposedly Haitians were eating pets (which was never true). Now, there is real terror in Springfield, but it’s not coming from the local Haitian population.
It comes from the forces that Ohio’s own senator, JD Vance, the GOP candidate for vice ...Read more
Editorial: Mark Robinson should quit the race for NC governor. If not, the GOP should shun him
Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson only has one decent option now: Quit the race for governor.
But despite a damning CNN report Thursday on his shocking internet postings from years ago, Robinson said he won’t take the decent option. Instead, he’s staying in the race and compounding the damage from the CNN report by denying it.
Robinson ...Read more
Commentary: We need the United Nations in the peacekeeping business again
Each September, the United Nations General Assembly kicks off its annual session with high-level meetings and pomp and circumstance in New York. This is the forum where the world’s countries come to talk to one another about shared problems and promises.
Headlining this year’s assembly is the Summit of the Future, calling for greater ...Read more
Editorial: Mexican 'rapists' seems so mild compared to what Trump says about immigrants today
In 2015, Donald Trump shocked the political establishment and many Americans when he came down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his first presidential candidacy and attacked Mexican migrants:
“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” Trump said at the time.
...Read more