“The only thing we have to fear is . . . Let’s face it, folks, I’m scared spitless.” So said Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Well, OK, he didn’t say that. FDR lived through the Great Depression, endured polio and world war, but somehow he didn’t live in fear, like we do in…
They warned us. The picture in the paper showed two 60-something women, embracing and kissing, having just been pronounced spouse and spouse. As I looked at the photo, I felt it: a rumbling, crumbling sound. Earth tremor? Landslide? The arrival of unwanted company? Conservatives warned us that legalized same-sex marriage would…
A controlling school-board clique seeks to sanitize the teaching of American history — scrub away unsightly blemishes like racial oppression and women’s liberation. Should be a piece of cake, right? Sure, except that the students find out about it and voice their outrage loudly. Result: The national media pays attention. The clique…
“In respect of civil rights,” wrote Justice John Harlan, “all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful." Well, at least that’s so on paper. In reality, it’s not true for the penniless, for the working poor and transient, for those marginalized over skin color, religion,…
One of the most fascinating events I’ve ever experienced was a climate conference several years ago at the University of Texas. There I observed the constant struggle between science and the special interests that have but one task to achieve: seed doubt about the science. I saw Texas-based climate scholars say what…
I’ll never forget Sen. Phil Gramm, the staunch fiscal hawk and self-proclaimed budget-balancer, telling me how it was just fine for the Reagan administration to enact the nation’s largest peacetime military buildup without raising taxes to pay for it. Borrowing, he said, was the American way. “You do it for your house, don’t you?”…
Back in the ’70s as a reporter for the college newspaper, I went to a faculty nutrition expert for a story about hunger in America. Sounded relevant, right? Well, “hunger” had barely escaped my lips before the professor turned the pretext of my visit around. Not to dismiss hunger, he said,…
When fire hoses sent black bodies skidding and writhing along the sidewalks of Birmingham in 1963, a lot of white people, high and dry, nodded, “Well, if that’s what it takes to keep the peace . . . “ And so it goes, 51 years later: different police-tactic horrors, but the same nodding of…
How to describe Congressman Paul Ryan’s reaction when Ray Jose showed up at his Florida book signing? Let’s say it was like a vegetarian who, suitably bibbed for a suitable meal, sees a rack of lamb slide before him. Jose is an organizer for United We Dream, a political group made up…
For Colorado, with a new wave of state test scores just released from the previous school year, it’s a “gulp” moment. Years of intensive school “accountability” have yielded little but air. The Denver Post editorial board says it this way: “Despite 10 years of bold efforts in educational reform, very little seems to have…