National Columns
James Finck: Executive orders – Part III
All Americans should be concerned about President Biden’s recent executive order on gun control. Try to forget for a moment, if you can, whether you agree with Biden or not and try instead to focus on the procedure. Biden is falling back on the two justifications that other presidents have used to skirt the Constitution, that Congress is not doing its job and that he is only following the will of the American people. However, is that statement true? In some ways, yes. But, historically speaking, presidents were never supposed to represent the people’s will and sometimes non-action is action.
Steve Chapman: Biden faces the tragic truth about Afghanistan
For most of the past 20 years, the United States has had a clear policy in Afghanistan: avoiding reality. We kept telling ourselves that if we stuck it out a while longer and did one thing or another differently, the outlook would brighten, paving the way for us to leave in the glow of victory. But that improvement never came.
Mona Charen: Not every tragedy is a racial lesson
Reliving the awful details of George Floyd’s slow suffocation is brutal and emotionally draining. As always in matters touching on race, the thrum of ethnic hostilities is the background noise. Some have been eager, since the trial began, to cite George Floyd’s drug use or heart trouble as the true cause of death (arguments the prosecution has effectively debunked). Others have argued that if Floyd had simply agreed to enter the squad car, he would be alive today — as if that exonerates the officers.
Steve Chapman: Police traffic stops are a needless danger
Driving has gotten much less dangerous over time, thanks to new safety features in cars, better highway design and a decline in drunk driving. But that’s no solace to motorists who face dangers of a different kind — not when they are driving, but when they are stopped on the side of the road.
Other Editors: Pause button continues with Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and that’s a good thing
Blood clots in veins that drain blood from the brain can lead to alarming stroke-like results. The symptoms can be severe headaches, abdominal pain, leg pain and shortness of breath.
Wyatt Emmerich: Nametags would make everything so much easier
“You have got to be the goobiest person who has ever lived on earth.”
Other Editors: Vaccine passports — with crucial protections — can help get us through herd immunity limbo
A traveler shows up at an airline gate, claiming that she’s been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and thus can fly safely to a country that requires that visitors be inoculated.
Froma Harrop: Should Mrs. Hostetter be allowed to teach?
Kristine Hostetter is a fourth-grade teacher in San Clemente, California. Her husband has been a big promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and she appears to be supporting his lunatic efforts.
Froma Harrop: Henry ford would have pushed car charging stations
When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, he had a problem. There were almost no paved roads in America. To sell his product to the masses, he needed good roads.
Armstrong Williams: CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ and media manipulation
This past Sunday, critically acclaimed CBS program “60 Minutes” broadcast an alleged bombshell report on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and an apparent “pay to play” scheme involving supermarket chain Publix and the state’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
Other Editors: Public safety vs early parole
Habitual offender Robert Leon Jackson had been out of prison for seven months on the state’s Earned Release Supervision Program when he murdered clerk Megan Staats and customer Jeremy Apperson at the CEFCO convenience store here on Highway 16 west in August 2018.
Steve Chapman: Republicans versus ‘Woke Corporations’: A losing battle
Mitch McConnell has been presented with the spectacle of giant American corporations taking sides on a political issue, and his eyes were seared by the
Leonard Pitts Jr.: Chauvin trial cannot vindicate America
America is on trial. Or at least, that is the conviction of many observers as Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, faces judge and jury in the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man. America on trial: it’s a headline in Time, the Toronto Star and Agence Marocaine De Presse, a news agency in Morocco.
Ben Shapiro: Past time to fight back
This week, on the basis of whole-cloth lies, major corporations went to political war with the state of Georgia. The lies at issue revolved around Georgia’s new voter law, characterized by both Stacey Abrams and President Joe Biden as a new form of Jim Crow.
Froma Harrop: Vaccine passports: A culture war we don’t have to wage
“We are not supporting doing any vaccine passports in the state of Florida,” declared Gov. Ron DeSantis. “It’s completely unacceptable,” he said, for either government or the private sector to require showing proof of vaccination against COVID-19 “to just simply participate in normal society.”
Historically speaking: Jim Crow voting?
Possibly one of the most important fights of this new century is being waged right now in the halls of Congress, in state houses across the nation, and with lesser significance on social media. The question is about voter accessibility and who has the right to determine it.
Other editors: Stop prosecutorial overreach
The Justice Department wants to make a firm statement about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which was a national disgrace. But as the criminal cases make their way through the courts, there are signs of prosecutorial overreach.
Mona Charen: What we can learn from Asian Americans
This much can be said without fear of contradiction: There has been a spike in disgusting crimes against Asian Americans during the past year. One analysis of 16 of the country’s largest cities found that acts of anti-Asian bias, not just crimes, increased by 145% between 2019 and 2020, even as other hate crimes declined.
