Steve Bannon just got Jeff Flaked. The former Trump strategist who has been on a chest-thumping tour vowing to defeat any Republican officeholder insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump got savagely attacked by the president for his insufficient loyalty. Nothing with Trump is final. Perhaps he’ll be talking to Bannon again soon enough. But Trump has […]
Op-Eds
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Matt Dunlap: I was on Trump's voter fraud commission; its demise was inevitable
It didn’t surprise me when I got an email from the White House on Wednesday night that President Donald Trump had moved to dissolve the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The move came without warning, but given how incredibly dysfunctional the process had been from the start, dissolution was inevitable. Twelve days earlier, U.S. […]
advertisement
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Iran faces a period of instability
NEW YORK — The most enlightening commentary on what is going on in Iran right now was written 162 years ago. In his book on the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville explained, “Revolutions are not always brought about by a gradual decline from bad to worse. Nations that have endured patiently and almost unconsciously the […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
'Dreamers' are people, not bargaining chips
The following appeared in Friday’s Washington Post: After all of President Donald Trump’s bluster about his “great love” for “dreamers,” brought to this country as children through no fault of their own, it turns out he’s content to use them as leverage in a high-stakes game of political horse-trading. Trump seems willing to strip them […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Character counts, but so do results
I do not make it a practice to comment on the work of fellow columnists, though occasionally some care to comment on mine, which is fine. I am happy to help them make a living. An exception will be made here because of New York Times “conservative” columnist, Bret Stephens. In an end-of-year column titled […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
We must get state and federal spending under control
We are fortunate that the economies statewide and nationally are growing at a very strong rate. However, both the state of Maine and the federal government are faced with the same problem as we begin the New Year, and that is how we control spending. The state must come to grips on how to pay […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Riddle me this
When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” he seemed to be saying inconsistency isn’t always a problem. Still inconsistency sometimes puzzles me. The most conservative Christians, for example. Seventy percent of white evangelicals in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for president, said a person’s moral character was important […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Try for real immigration law reform
The U.S. Congress has kicked the federal budget “down the road” once again, extending a Dec. 22, 2017, deadline into the New Year’s date of Jan. 19. Making that deadline will likely be another “Perils of Pauline” spectacle, with many contentious issues requiring resolution, all with the expected threats of “shutting down the government.” One […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Up to the UN to help avert the return of chaos in Somalia
After the victory by the Somali people against the Ethiopian occupation in 2006-2009, the United Nations’ mission was to support the moderate groups of the Islamic rebels in joining the warlords to create a transitional government of national unity. It also was to disarm most of the feuding factions’ militias, create a Somali army, provide […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Tough trade policy could cost jobs
By MaineToday Media A plan to punish Canadian paper mills may do more damage to American newspaper workers. If you’ve ever tried to fix a sweater by pulling out a stray piece of yarn, you have some idea of what can happen if you try to fix just one trade problem along the Canadian border. […]