Somebody went after Rachel Maddow last week. You might not have heard about it. The story didn’t get much traction in a week that began with video of President Donald Trump “wrestling” CNN and ended with his embarrassing trip to the G20 summit in Germany. Still, some of us would argue that it merits at […]
Op-Eds
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Difficult to see America's role in the world
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is, rests on a massive and apparently indestructible contradiction. Trump wants the United States to remain the “essential” nation, the best embodiment of Western ideals of freedom and democracy, while at the same time deliberately alienating many of our traditional “allies,” whose support the United States […]
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Banning nips will cause more problems than solutions
In 2013, more than 100 workers at the then-Beam plant in Lewiston thought they were going to lose their jobs when Beam announced it would be moving its operations out of Lewiston. Fortunately, an American liquor company, Sazerac, came in and bought the plant, keeping good jobs in Lewiston and bringing a nationally recognized brand […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Leftists offer unhinged reaction to Trump address
Imagine that President Donald Trump gave a speech praising a strong Europe. Imagine that he called forthrightly on Russia to stop its aggression in Ukraine and join the community of responsible nations. Imagine that he embraced the mutual defense commitment, so-called Article 5, of NATO. Imagine that he extolled the role of women in our […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
On North Korea, hope is not a strategy
NEW YORK — In Washington, there is a conventional wisdom on North Korea that spans both parties and much of elite opinion. It goes roughly like this: North Korea is the world’s most bizarre country, run by a crackpot dictator with a strange haircut. He is unpredictable and irrational and cannot be negotiated with. Eventually […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
No easy choices when dealing with North Korea’s missiles
WASHINGTON — Across 25 years and five administrations, we have kicked the North Korean can down the road. We are now out of road. On July 4, North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile apparently capable of hitting the United States. As yet, only Alaska. Soon, every American city. Moreover, Pyongyang claims to have already […]
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A time and place when civility was common
PLYMOUTH NOTCH, Vermont — When was the last time you heard a member of one political party praise a member of the other party? Here in this hamlet nestled among the Green Mountains, former Baltimore Democratic Mayor Kurt Schmoke rose to speak well of our 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, a Republican. The occasion was the […]
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Is notion of a genderless humanity going too far?
We don’t even have pronouns for this. That’s what accounts for the clumsy grammar of the statement parent Kori Doty issued about Doty’s newborn baby, Searyl Atli Doty. For that matter, it also accounts for the clumsy grammar of the sentence you just read. Anyway, Kori Doty’s statement read: “It’s up to Searyl to decide […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Theory behind repeal, replace is ‘economism.’ Problem? It’s bad economics.
As GOP members of Congress frantically scramble to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — endeavoring to reconcile the chasm between reality and rhetoric and between their constituents and donor base — most are trying to square the circle by invoking “economism.” Economism, a term popularized by James Kwak in his recent book […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
General aviation: A lifeline for rural Maine
In 1998, an ice storm swept through Maine, quietly burying roads and towns. Some communities became completely inaccessible. Without general aviation, many towns and island communities would have been cut off from resources for an unknown period of time. It was general aviation pilots who stepped up to provide a vital link to ensure transportation […]