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Columns/Opinion

Trump gives up on census question. Score one for nation

The announcement late Tuesday by the Trump administration that it would drop efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census is a victory not only for a more accurate census but for the rule of law. The administration had insisted that it needed to ask everyone across the country next year whether they were U.S. citizens to help it enforce the Voting Rights Act, a laughably thin excuse for an administration that cares naught for voting rights. The truth emerged early on. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the request had come from Justice Department officials. But he ...

How Democrats define themselves

Dave Anderson The Baltimore Sun College professors spend a lot of time distinguishing different theories and points of view within disciplines, choosing their language very carefully to distinguish the different camps, defending some and criticizing others. Politics, interestingly, is very similar. Candidates and political parties invest enormous amounts of resources and time defining which candidates and positions they support and which they oppose. They go out of their way to tar the other side with labels and concepts they find negative and to define themselves through ideas ...

Manchin must take action on climate change

By Danielle Walker As a mother and a state official, I think about the health and well-being of West Virginia’s children every day. Unfortunately, many of our leaders in Washington do not. Nowhere is this more evident than their failure to take action on climate change, the single biggest threat to our children’s health and future. My two sons are among the 34,779 children in West Virginia suffering from asthma. This was one of the issues that spurred me to run for the West Virginia House of Delegates, because I know we must clean up the pollution in our state that makes asthma ...

Selling out Nike’s jobs to ‘outrage’

If you’re looking for heroes in the battle over the flag-emblazoned shoes Nike made and then recalled, you’re out of luck. The shoe giant made the first mistake when it tried to monetize American patriotism by introducing a new rendition of a 32-year-old shoe, the Nike Air Max 1, just in time for the Fourth of July with an early version of the American flag emblazoned on its heel. It’s hardly the first apparel company to try to profit off of flag worship, but still — commercializing the flag is tacky. In this case, the flag was the 13-star, 13-stripe version commonly ...

Is the political cartoonist an endangered species?

Here’s how I define unnerving times: When professionals who write, draw or talk about current events for a living worry that if they dare create anything satiric, mocking or funny, they’ll be laid off, shut down, let go or put through the wringer. America’s — and the world’s — increasing inability to tolerate irony, dissonance and humor is enough to make you bite your tongue or, worse, put your pencil down, as if democracy’s test has just been declared at an end. I’m particularly worried about the future of political cartoonists. The best political cartoonists, ...

Let’s all agree that America is more than ‘just OK’

It seems an inevitability that every year around the Fourth of July, certain media will publish a series of articles reminding people how unremarkable it is to live in America. This year The New York Times’ opinion team didn’t disappoint, publishing a video that declared, “we’re just OK,” and explaining to viewers that when compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. really doesn’t stack up. The video cites “a whopping 18% poverty rate, closer to Mexico than Western Europe,” lower high school science, reading and math levels compared to other nations, and ...