Category / Public Affairs

One overlooked aspect of the rise of mistrust in all institutions that we seem to be living through is the selfishness of those who are cynically taking advantage of it for their personal and political gain, foremost among them the leadership of the Republican Party.

Our monetary and financial systems, the scientific research community, and democratic institutions large and small depend on a basic level of trust to operate, and as a consequence, so does our civilization. And yet …

Things I know:

• We will never be able to prevent eruptions of gun violence by alienated and angry young men by identifying them and intervening in advance. There are just too many of them that show warning signs, and they are too impulsive. Claiming that this is a mental health problem leads us down a blind alley and will not lead to a solution.
• Our society is saturated guns, including hyper-lethal semi-automatic weapons with extended magazines. We could largely

I have to think even some in our chronically detached and distracted electorate have to be impressed with the job President Biden is doing in regards to Ukraine. He has been engaged, strong and energetic, going to our NATO allies and impressing them with his leadership and commitment. He is showing all the qualities that the Republican Party of cynics and suckers and their Fox News allies have said he lacks, projecting a steadfast strength and resolve that his predecessor …

Democrats who hesitate to change the rule in the Senate around the filibuster out of fear of opening the floodgates to Republican party chicanery would do well to remember Majority Leader McConnel’s history. He refused for nine months to allow hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, whom many Republican senators were on record as supporting as a moderate, on the insincere justification of leaving the choice to the next president, and then pushed through the nomination of …

In her excellent op-ed “Expand the Supreme Court,” Elizabeth Warren lists a number of recent rulings in which the court has pulled back rights of US citizens but she glances over another instance in which the current radical court overturned established precedent. While the threat she cites that the current court poses to localities’ rights to limit an individual’s right to bear arms under any circumstances is indeed daunting, it stems from the court’s bizarre decision to ignore the language …

The huge pictures on the front page of Sports on July 16, two on the front, one on page 3, showing Celtics and their barber without masks, represent a dereliction of the Globe’s duty to support community efforts to suppress Covid 19.

These things matter. Mask wearing is the single best way to suppress the virus and allow our lives and businesses to return to some semblance of normal, and we’re still far from that. Though we’ve entered phase 3, …

Today’s Globe headline reads, “Same company, same city, two coronavirus outbreaks at separate Medford nursing homes.” In an article published several days earlier, I found the following quote from the facilities’ owner: “I can assure you that we are working around the clock to keep our patients and residents healthy and as safe as possible. We are doing everything in our power — and everything medical experts know as of this time — to protect our patients, residents, and employees.”…

President Trump called determining when to relax social distancing guidelines “the biggest decision I’ll ever make,” but that statement simply shows how clueless he is. While the President dithered and whined, it was left to governors and mayors to impose shelter-in-place lock-downs to protect us from the worst of the pandemic, and we should have every expectation that they will be the ones to decide when to move on from them. What Trump ‘decides’ may influence a few of the …

In his editorial, “’Moderate’ Joe Biden has moved way to the left,” Jeff Jacoby omits important context. In addition to one bald misrepresentation, claiming that Obama opposed a public option in the ACA rather than negotiating it away in a futile attempt to woo Republican moderates, he leaves out the history of conservatives dragging their party and our country far right for the past four decades. Their policies since Reagan, and regrettably including Bill Clinton, prescribed the unbridled capitalism that …