Rights and Democracy
The Sixties Made Me Do It
I try to avoid religious commentary, but — Good God! What is it about confession that the Catholic hierarchy can’t seem to grasp?
Education Is Universal but Unequal
Cities rarely make headlines for their good news. Just the reverse. Take mine. Norwalk has garnered national TV and newspaper coverage for prosecuting a poor mom who was stealing our precious educational services. In other words, she enrolled her out-of-town son in our school system from a phony address. She wanted to get him a better education than he was likely to acquire in her own downtrodden Bridgeport. Shame, shame.
Mobile Mugging
A recent T-Mobile commercial depicts a cellphone customer being harassed by two thugs in business suits, his pockets emptied, his wallet turned inside out, and every last penny shaken out of him. The gist: He’s being mugged by T-Mobile’s competitors, which all charge higher prices for less service than T-Mobile.
The IMF’s Assault on Women
A grand jury has indicted Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former head of the world’s most powerful financial institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on seven counts, including attempted rape of a Manhattan hotel worker. Following his alleged attack on the Guinean immigrant as she tried to clean up his $3,000-per-night Manhattan hotel suite, the Frenchman’s history of treating women as expendable sex objects is just coming to light.
Some Good News, at Last
There’s been a lot of bad news lately — wars, revolutions, earthquakes, floods, famines. It’s getting so you need a drink before you’re ready to face the evening news. Which is why when something cheerful happens, I take time to savor it. Like, for example, Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest.
A Little Less Corporate Political Corruption
President Barack Obama is thinking about issuing an executive order that would mitigate some of the damage done to our democracy by the Supreme Court’s dastardly Citizens United edict, which unleashes unlimited amounts of secret corporate cash to pervert America’s elections.
‘Womanizer’ Isn’t a Synonym for ‘Sexual Predator’
Most of the reporting on jailed, soon-to-be-former, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is shifting from accounts of the sexual-assault charges he faces to questions about his past — rife with incidents that may have constituted sex crimes, even if charges weren’t filed. And there’s a great deal of reporting about the lack of reporting on earlier, newsworthy misdeeds.
Mitt Romney’s Mexican Roots
As a Latino, family heritage is important to me. I believe we can all learn from the journeys of our ancestors. For some, these may have involved crossing the border without papers, seeking freedom from persecution, or fleeing the violence of revolution. These struggles and sacrifices have made our country great.
Tea Party Rebels Quickly Tamed
They came, they saw, they were conquered. That sums up the fate of many tea-partying freshmen in the House of Representatives.
Tea Partiers March to Lobbyists’ Tune
