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John L. Micek

COMMENTARY

No, guns do kill people. And the solution is glaringly obvious

By: - January 26, 2023

The United States has averaged more than one mass shooting per day since January 2022, but elected officials refuse to act. My Nhan, 65, immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in the 1980s, and made her home in California’s San Gabriel Valley, in a community called Rosemead. Her niece, Fonda Quan, said she was ready “to start the year fresh,” and celebrate with her friends, according to the CBC. She never got the chance.

COMMENTARY

Bowie, Bing and a Christmas wish for peace on Earth | Friday morning coffee

By: - December 23, 2022

I wasn’t going to write a Christmas column. After so many years, and so many column inches, I wasn’t sure I could add anything new to a time of year that, when it isn’t steeped in tradition, is too often steeped in cliché, and no small amount of holiday schmaltz. But because this is my […]

‘Abortion absolutely is healthcare’: U.S. House panel told as GOP pursues nationwide ban

By: - September 30, 2022

NC’s Virginia Foxx likens support for abortion rights to policies in China and North Korea A nationwide abortion ban would widen disparities in healthcare and drive up the maternal mortality rate, particularly among Black women, physicians and advocates told a U.S. House panel on Thursday. “Women’s progress has always been inextricably linked with the ability […]

COMMENTARY

DeSantis’ compassionless conservatism underscores urgency of real immigration reform

By: - September 22, 2022

‘The migrants are human beings, and we’ve got to treat them like human beings. They are being used as political pawns to get publicity,’ U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, of Texas, said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to airlift 48 migrants from San Antonio, Texas to the island resort of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. last week was depthless in its cruelty and cynicism, evoking the worst of America’s nativist and segregationist history.

COMMENTARY

Report: Online trolls are spreading offline hate against LGBTQ Americans

By: - September 19, 2022

Tweets using the ‘grooming’ slur shot up by 406% in the month after Florida passed ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill Baseless attacks against LGBTQ Americans by online trolls — whether anonymous or by well-known politicians and public figures — have created a “cascade of … hate, underpinned by dangerous misinformation and outright lies against the LGBTQ+ […]

COMMENTARY

Biden’s Philadelphia speech was a challenge to all of us. We have to step up

By: - September 6, 2022

Returning to the state where he launched his candidacy — and the one that handed him the White House in 2020 — President Joe Biden called on Americans last Thursday to join him in a fight to preserve democracy and to beat back the forces of extremism. The 30-minute address was equal parts tribute to […]

COMMENTARY

The Dems’ 2022 momentum just shifted. GOP overreach on abortion helped power it

By: - August 25, 2022

Has the right’s electoral gamble on abortion failed? With the midterms a little less than three months away, there’s some reason for encouragement. Consider these three developments alone: The results of a recount in Kansas this week reaffirmed that voters overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have stripped residents of the Sunflower State of […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards reminds us what heroism looks like

By: - June 13, 2022

Long after Trump takes his place among history’s reviled strongmen, Caroline Edwards’ courage will be celebrated and remembered Every Republican who’s ever denied, or tried to minimize, the hideously destructive reality of the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, should be required to sit and listen to the testimony of Capitol Police […]

COMMENTARY

Pennsylvania Senate nominee’s lesson for Dems: A clear brand and coherent message wins every time

By: - May 23, 2022

You’d be hard-pressed to find a Pennsylvania Democrat who didn’t think that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman wasn’t going to come out at the right end of Tuesday’s nationally watched primary for U.S. Senate. And even if he did lead in the polls heading into election night, the comprehensiveness of Fetterman’s win — he carried all […]

COMMENTARY

The GOP’s anti-abortion crusade is not pro-family at all

By: - May 4, 2022

In the hours after the bombshell leak of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion toppling Roe v. Wade, I awaited the torrent of Republican-authored press releases vowing to provide every resource the federal government could muster to support the millions of new families they were going to usher into existence. Of course, that […]

Poll of battleground states like NC: Dems can win on immigration if the message is right

By: - April 25, 2022

A new poll of key 2022 battleground states offers Democrats a road map to victory among coveted Latino voters when it comes to immigration issues — if they’re willing to follow it. The bottom line? When they talk about immigration, try sounding less Republican. But to do that, Democrats are going to have to get […]

COMMENTARY

What are book bans really about? Fear

By: - April 21, 2022

More years ago than I really care to count, the children’s librarian in my little town in rural northwestern Connecticut, apparently tired of my endlessly renewing the same book over and over again, pressed a copy of “The White Mountains” by John Christopher into my eight-year-old hands. Mrs. Bullock was her name. She was the […]