Kentucky has become a favored dateline for many of President Donald Trump’s fervent critics. They collect evidence there of betrayal, such as the ABC News item featuring a coal truck driver, “one of the Trump faithful,” attached to a breathing tube and weeping over his expected loss of coverage for deadly black lung disease. “Look […]
Op-Eds
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Neil Gorsuch steals the week
WASHINGTON — Watching the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, one might easily find oneself wishing he were president of the United States. Alas, he’s not. But Gorsuch’s selection to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia is the sanest act committed by a president whose first 60 days have left him with […]
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Trump’s chickens finally come home to roost
On Monday, accountability finally arrived for Donald Trump. After 70 years spent largely skating free of consequences for his puerile misbehaviors and diarrheal mouth, he likely found it something of a shock. Seven decades is a long time, after all, and if the so-called president has learned nothing else in those years, he has learned […]
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President Trump can be his own worst enemy
The Trump administration is in the throes of one of the greatest self-inflicted distractions of the modern presidency. The latest chapter comes from James Comey in his highly anticipated congressional testimony. The FBI director said that he has no information to support President Donald Trump’s infamous weekend tweets alleging he was wiretapped by President Barack […]
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Dump the myth that Obamacare froze out Republicans
It’s true. The Affordable Care Act was passed without a single Republican vote. Republicans repeatedly cite this fact as Obamacare’s original sin, a fatal flaw that justifies their efforts to dismantle the ACA. But let’s set that record straight. Obamacare was a bipartisan plan. It just didn’t get a bipartisan vote. Despite rumors to the […]
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Republicans must get health care right
Readers of a certain age may recall ads for Ivory Soap, which claimed to be 99 and 44/100ths percent pure. If the soap could have reached 100 percent purity, the company would likely have made the claim. Purity, apparently, is what some conservative Republicans are demanding in a health insurance bill, which likely will be […]
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Salvaging Medicaid will require work
WASHINGTON — It’s time to take control of Medicaid before it takes control of us. Unless we act — and there is little evidence that we will — Medicaid increasingly becomes another mechanism by which government skews spending toward the old and away from the young. In the raging debate over the Affordable Care Act […]
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Europe doesn't like what it sees in U.S.
WASHINGTON — President Trump might do the world a perverse favor. Voters in Western Europe appear to be looking at what America has brought upon itself and deciding: “We sure as heck don’t want to go there.” Thus did the Netherlands slap back the ethno-nationalist far right in its elections last week. The forces of […]
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GOP face split over health care plan
Less than two weeks after the unveiling of the GOP Obamacare replacement, the party is already staring into the abyss. The bill has had the worst rollout of any major piece of legislation in memory, and failure is very much an option. If the proposal falters, it will be a political debacle that could poison […]
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Did they even ask that mother in Detroit?
WASHINGTON — From Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” to Donald Trump’s “Detroit single mom,” the unmarried mother remains a constant fascination to Republicans wielding budget-cutting scalpels. Whereas Reagan was propagating a stereotype of the fraudulent abuser of public largesse when he popularized the term in 1976, framing welfare policy thereafter, Trump’s budget blueprint purportedly is aimed […]