freedom
Federal judge strikes down Arkansas ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth
A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth Tuesday, nearly two years after blocking it from going into effect. Act 626 of 2021, known as the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, prohibited physicians from providing “gender transition” treatments like hormones, puberty blockers and surgeries to those under age […]
Juneteenth offers new ways to teach about slavery, Black perseverance and American history
Whenever I tell high school students in classes I visit that I appreciated learning about slavery as a child growing up in the Caribbean, they often look confused. Why, they ask, did I like learning about slavery given that it was so horrible and harsh? How could I value being taught about something that caused […]
From my cold dead hand: Gun groups perpetuate militia myth to keep whatever arms they dream of
About the Second Amendment: I have questions. I cannot wrap my lizard-sized brain around the notion that the reason for people to keep and own guns is to protect against tyranny. Spare me the historical discourses about the establishment of the Second Amendment, because I realize a bunch of a rag-tag colonists rose up against […]
Monopoly men: GOP legislative leaders continue to extend their power in all directions
Is there any aspect of life in modern North Carolina for which the Republican majority of the General Assembly doesn’t see itself as the font of all wisdom and rightful final arbiter? That’s not a facetious question. GOP pols and their pals on the religious right and in the business and gun lobbies love to […]
On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, no one should settle for ‘a piece of freedom’
Some historians mark the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder as the end of the civil rights movement. Over an arc of 14 years — from the 1954 Brown Decision to King’s death in 1968 — the nation attempted to address its racial caste system. The same nation that launched a war on hunger and […]
‘Winter is here’: Chess champion Kasparov warns that Ukraine war is a test for democracies
Kasparov follows in footsteps of Churchill with Fulton speech calling for hard line against Putin and dictators around the world FULTON, MO. — The invasion of Ukraine awakened free countries to the threat posed by Russia and Vladimir Putin, but whether they will sustain that resistance to dictators is an open question, former world chess […]
Biden’s Philadelphia speech was a challenge to all of us. We have to step up
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 […]
Dems need to grab the high ground of freedom
As an ad guy I’m used to working on tightly choreographed brand campaigns, so I get frustrated with the communications efforts of the Democratic Party. And I’m not just talking about the annoying daily flood of emails from congressional candidates 10 states away pleading for a few dollars “to help me meet my urgent fund-raising goal by midnight tonight.”
A Republic, if we can keep it: Now is not the time for despair, but renewed and relentless action
Most of us have heard the tale: As Benjamin Franklin walked out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” Franklin is said to have responded, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” This Independence Day, many Americans feel betrayed and […]
American freedom will be on the line this November
Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that Americans no longer have a constitutional right to control their own reproduction is a disaster of monumental proportions. Never before in American history has the nation’s high court taken away such a well-established and long exercised fundamental right.
Will Juneteenth have broader, enduring meaning as a national holiday?
In June 2021, Congress, with a unanimous vote in the Senate and support of all but 14 Republicans in the House of Representatives, passed legislation designating June 19th as Juneteenth National Independence Day, commemorating the end of slavery for Black Americans. But what does it really mean? In the years to come, will it be […]
We have the tools to build an extraordinary civilization. We ought to use them
Too often sharing the news feels like being a messenger of madness. Every day, foundational democratic institutions suffer sustained assault while a corrupt, extremist right-wing tyranny over Ohio politics and policy reigns. As important as it is to chronicle the “first draft of history” by finding the facts and holding power to account, the American […]