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He once damaged ROTC offices

On Friday, I will attend the solemn ceremony at Northwestern University in which Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps students will take the oath to become members of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. As both a faculty member and graduate of Northwestern, I try to attend each year as these brilliant young people commit themselves to a life fraught with potential danger in service to our country. They have earned and deserve our solidarity and support. Almost 50 years ago, as a Northwestern undergraduate, I was arrested for damaging the NROTC offices during an anti-Vietnam War ...

Oberlin’s racial hucksterism comes home to roost

As a right-wing alumna of far-left Oberlin College, I have four words for the administration in response to last week’s ground-breaking $11 million jury verdict in the defaming of humble Gibson’s Bakery: You had it coming. I have five more words for Oberlin as arrogant college officials continue their obstinate war on the Gibson family even after the much-deserved courtroom defeat: You still don’t get it. After the college sent out vice president, general counsel and secretary Donica Thomas Varner’s June 7 email to alumni disparaging the verdict and lying about ...

Yes, Elizabeth Warren can win

Elizabeth Warren can do it. Yes, she can. I’ll concede that betting on winners and losers in the Democratic presidential free-for-all is like betting on Chicago weather in June. Only fools and hardcore gamblers would dare. But if I had to gamble, I’d bet my collectible Obama-Biden button that Warren will be among the top two contenders in the Democratic race. What the heck, I’ll gamble big: I’ll stake that button on her being the nominee. I’ve been sensing Warren’s rise for weeks, even before her poll numbers went up and the media air around her brightened. ...

Trump isn’t behind Iran’s belligerence

As President Trump mulls a comprehensive response to what he says was an Iranian attack on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf last week, his smarter critics are not questioning Iran’s likely culpability. Instead, they are asking, “What did you expect?” So Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, agreed that evidence of Iran’s responsibility for the attacks is “very strong and compelling.” But he also lamented that Trump had isolated the U.S. from its allies, and how those allies and U.S. intelligence analysts warned “that this kind ...

Why should I still support Catholic Church?

By John A. Ralph The Baltimore Sun I have become an angry Catholic. While I have been a faithful, life-long member of my church, and a long-time parishioner within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, I don’t think I could get any more cynical about my church’s leadership. Like a lot of Catholics, I’ve been waiting for church leaders to do something meaningful in response to the sexual abuse crisis. I had high hopes for the Vatican summit earlier this year, which I thought might result in real reforms to address the culture of abuse that has infected the priesthood over the past ...

Not all budget deficits created equal

The U.S. budget deficit is now almost $740 billion, the Treasury Department reported last week, prompting a new round of familiar criticism of 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act: The law’s huge tax cuts were irresponsible, as were Republicans’ sloppy and at times deliberately misleading assertions that the law would pay for itself. That criticism is understandable, but it elides an important distinction. Deficits that arise from tax cuts aren’t as bad as those from spending increases. First, it’s nearly impossible for a tax cut to result in increased revenues the year after ...