VOICES

LEGAL WOES - The irony was lost on no one last week when we learned that the parents of the mayor of Los Angeles have hired a professional lobbyist to make the case to the U.S. Senate that their son should be confirmed as ambassador to India (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2022). 

IN MEMORIAM - It was 15 years ago this month that Joseph Anzack Jr., private first class, United States Army, faced impending death on a dark and dusty road during America’s long war in Iraq.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Memorial Day is a federal holiday for mourning the U.S. military personnel who have died while serving their country established in 1868 a few years after the Civil War ended.

A VIEW FROM HERE - In 1776, America Founded Itself on Two  Revolutionary Theories.

WHITE SUPREMACY - Civil rights activist and philosopher Cornel West called out former President Donald Trump for leading a “hate campaign” against Black and brown people.

ECONOMIC RELIEF - I borrowed money to pay for college. Like 45 million other Americans who did the same, I owe student loan debt.

GUEST COMMENTARY - It's been a week since a mentally ill racist murdered 10 people, most of them Black Americans, in a Buffalo supermarket.

UP TO THE STATES - Last year, David Pepper was so frustrated by the atrophied state of U.S. democracy that he tweeted a riff on a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “States are the laboratories of democracy.”

ROE V WADE - As the ridiculously right-wing United States Supreme Court stands poised to defy majority public opinion by reversing its 1973 Roe v. Wade (hereafter “Roe”) decision and thereby stripping away women’s half-century constitutional right to an abortion,

GUN VIOLENCE - In the 23 years since Columbine, at least 554 students, educators, and school staff have been victims of school shootings, according to a Washington Post report.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Some people argue that it is disrespectful to the dead to use such a tragedy to score political points.

The Doctor is IN:  Let me start by proclaiming that I am a physician who supports the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, Law Enforcement, and also science over feelings with respect to public health.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Elections are beneficial when two situations coincide:

VIDEO - Senator Chris Murphy delivers an emotional address to the Senate regarding the Texas school shooting.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Before a hate-filled 18-year-old murdered 10 and wounded 3 African Americans in Buffalo on May 14, he penned a rambling screed about replacement theory.

GUEST COMMENTARY - In 1936 at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt told a cheering crowd that the only way to redeem the country from the Great Depression was by defeating the “economic royalists” who controlled the economy and sought “control over government itself.”

THE VIEW FROM HERE - “In a week, American voters can do to white nationalists what they fear most.

GUEST COMMENTARY - I only echo the voices of thousands who sounded the alarm before me, but then again it cannot be said enough.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE - Among the thousands of students graduating from San Diego State this weekend is one of California’s youngest and most unlikely philanthropists.

ROE V WADE - “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” — Genesis 2:18. RSV

GUEST COMMENTARY - Long before a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion revealed that by summer Roe v. Wade will likely be overturned, only pregnant people bore the burden of pregnancy—not just physically, but also financially.