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Columns/Opinion

Ill will to men (and women) who support Trump

Apologies to Elton John, but in Washington and throughout so much of the country, can you feel the hate tonight? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by reporter James Rosen if she hates President Trump. She responded with an “if looks could kill” fire in her eyes and denounced Rosen for his question while claiming she doesn’t hate Trump. Former Vice President Joe Biden verbally attacked and challenged an 83-year-old man in Iowa to a push-up contest at a gathering of Democrats. The man asked about Biden’s son and how he managed to get a lucrative job with a Ukraine gas ...

Universal mental health care?

Whenever there is a mass shooting, two questions are repeated in the news and social media: Did the shooter have a history of mental illness? And why weren’t warning signs identified earlier? These questions reflect the barriers to better mental health care. Questioning whether the shooter ever had mental illness reinforces the false idea that some people experience mental illness while the rest do not, which is the foundation of stigma. Questioning why the shooter didn’t have an earlier intervention highlights the lack of prevention in our current mental health system, which ...

Texture key element of handmade goods

Last week, Kevin Zorn and I chatted over coffee — I expected to learn about his hobby and art: Spoon carving. While we did discuss his process, materials and other general info about spoons, our conversation also gave me lots of food for thought. Kevin often creates unconventional coffee spoons — handles bent or twisted, showcasing knots in the wood, and sometimes triangular or oval scoops. The quirkiness of the spoons led me to reach out to Kevin. We quickly delved into the texture of his spoons. As he explained, among the worldwide spoon carving community, there is a ...

To all you privately disgusted Republicans

This is an open letter to all of you privately disgusted Republicans. It’s prompted by the fact that in the last few days, two of your colleagues have come forward to share with us your angst. One was actually an ex-colleague, former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent. He told CNN that you continue to support Donald Trump because pressure from the base — the almighty base — forces you to. “But there’s no question,” he added, “having spoken to many of them privately, they’re absolutely disgusted and exhausted by the president’s behavior.” Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks seconded ...

One death row case indicts the entire system

The American criminal justice system has never been as good about ferreting out truth and justice as most people would like to think. The system relies on the memories and judgments of human beings, which makes it fallible and, worse, subject to manipulation. A new in-depth look at the career of a single jailhouse informant brings the system’s failings into sharp relief and stands as an irrefutable indictment of capital punishment and the criminal justice system itself. The article, by investigative reporter Pamela Colloff follows the life of a two-bit grifter named Paul Skalnik who ...

Trump could be unpardonable

Not even overwhelming evidence that Donald Trump sought to bribe a foreign power to dig up dirt on his leading political opponent in 2020 — and did so with American taxpayer dollars while compromising American foreign policy — will cause Trump to be removed from office. That’s because there’s zero chance that 20 Republican senators — the number needed to convict Trump, if every Democratic senator votes to do so — have enough integrity to do what the Constitution requires them to do. Republican senators will put their jobs and their political party ahead of the Constitution ...