Adam Lanza just wanted a sporting chance. He had only so much time to kill once he entered Sandy Hook Elementary. His schedule had been pinched by having just shot his mother dead. What’s a tormented individual to do? Remington Arms had the answer: the Bushmaster…
When he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Martin Luther King Jr. was as serious about patience as he was about persistence. Patience: a hefty ask in a tormented year like 1968. But at least the word “wait” was in our…
(The following contains discussion of race and basketball. Contact authorities where required by law.) The Washington Post recently published a piece about the 75th anniversary of the NBA. Headlined “How the NBA sweeps away its early history,” it more suitably could be titled, “When the NBA couldn’t jump.” You see, as…
I’m not going to blame Associated Press for the clear typo in a recent story about Republican aversion to science. AP does incredible work. As the story reported, “Republicans’ faith in science is falling as Democrats rely on it even more.” Nothing incorrect with that wording. Sadly, in…
It’s odd. I just watched one of those dreary year-anniversary treatments of the Joe Biden presidency, and it left out his most important achievement. In newsroom talk, that’s called “burying the lede.” Staying in journalism mode, I’m going to pronounce it the editorial omission of the century.…
What state will be next to fall under the Iron Curtain? We speak here not of the ’50s-’60s, Commie kind. We speak but of the ’22 Republican kind – the 12 GOP-controlled states prepared to ban abortion as soon as the Supreme Court gives the word. In…
Joe Biden needs a traveling prop. Every time he speaks, it should be at his side. It should be the symbol of the next election and his campaign for re-election. Biden’s partner at each podium should be a ballot box – a mail-in ballot drop box, to…
This isn’t fire season. Where I reside, it is the season of sleds and snowballs. But there they were on a late December day, thousands of residents of the Colorado towns of Superior and Louisville, fleeing as wind-tossed fireballs consumed whole subdivisions. To everything there is a…
Build Back Better. It’s a great handle for bridges, viaducts and sewer lines. But, oh, my — how inadequate a name for legislation that’s more complex and nuanced, focused on survival – personal, planetary. No wonder Joe Manchin says he can’t sell it to the people of…
In biology, surface distinctions among human beings barely count. Regardless of skin color, we all share 99.9 percent of our genetic code with one another. Biologically, race is an artifice, a distinction without a distinction. Try telling that, however, to the Republican Party’s computers. They…