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Politics get stranger

Columnists

Politics is becoming stranger than ever and worst mannered. Despite some hints that bipartisanship would somehow break out, the evidence does not support such an occurrence. Amity is not the spirit of the season; blood red partisan fury, unfortunately, is. Mike Johnson’s eagerness to adjourn the House of Representatives is so frequent that one is tempted to believe he would prefer the one-session popular in the 19th century. As for Donald Trump, he is not in a particularly good mood, so forget National Brotherhood Week. As a result, much does not get done, and Republicans seem ...

Take time to collect all the bright spots

Columnists

Sometimes as we’re wrapping up the year, it’s easy to drift into negativity. End-of-year evaluations tend to produce mixed finding — some areas show strong results, while others fall short. It’s human nature to focus on what didn’t go as planned. Add in the stress and exhaustion of the holiday season, along with budget pressures and goal-setting for the year ahead, and it becomes even easier to miss all the good things that were accomplished over the past year. This is why it’s powerful to end the year by collecting and sharing bright spots that occurred in ...

Trump says Kirk’s murder changed his life

Columnists

EXCLUSIVE — In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election, then-candidate Donald Trump was doing nonstop rallies, many of them outdoors despite an assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left him bloodied after a bullet struck his ear. The rallies felt more like festivals than political events, with crowds gathering hours early amid music and pageantry. Local heroes, union leaders, elected officials and retired military officers cycled through as warmup speakers, firing up the audience between tracks like Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of ...

Socialism vs. Capitalism

Columnists

People criticize capitalism. A recent Axios-Generation poll says, “College students prefer socialism to capitalism.” Why? Because they believe absurd myths. Like the claim that the Soviet Union “wasn’t real socialism.” Socialism guru Noam Chomsky tells students that. He says the Soviet Union “was about as remote from socialism as you could imagine.” Give me a break. The Soviets made private business illegal. If that’s not socialism, I’m not sure what is. “Socialism means abolishing private property and ... replacing it with some form of collective ...

‘Syrupy Minutes’ on CBS?

Columnists

CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi raged against the network’s Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss when she delayed her story on how the Trump administration deported illegal immigrants from Venezuela to a “notorious” prison in El Salvador. Weiss wanted more reporting and more rebuttal from the Trump administration in it. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi complained in a memo leaked to the media. “We go from ...

Addiction

Editorials

“When someone asks for help, the answer shouldn’t be a stack of paperwork.” That is true in most facets of our lives, but in this case, U.S. Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., is talking about addiction treatment — and rightfully so. Those ready and willing to seek help sometimes find themselves confronted with a daunting number of hoops to jump through. But Justice and U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., have introduced the No Red Tape for Addiction Treatment Act. “This legislation cuts through the red tape and puts lifesaving addiction treatment where it belongs — in the hands ...