VALENTINE’S DAY … Once I left the seminary back in the Sixties, I got to be full-on romantic. Poetry, not the priesthood, held me in thrall. Riding around San Francisco on a Honda 250 with my opera jacket, long beard, and flowers in my hair, my wife’s scarf floating Isadora Duncan-style behind us down San Francisco’s Mission Street, as we wove our way in and out of traffic towork downtown …
On Jan. 24, I attended a regional gathering of hunters, anglers, and other public lands advocates on northern Minnesota’s Pelican Lake. It was the same day Federal immigration agents shot and killed Veterans Affairs nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
The Heritage Foundation is back with a new plan for remaking America in its own image. The think tank which masterminded Project 2025 released a new issue paper last month, this time focused on, as the title puts it, “Saving America by Saving the Family.” Where Project 2025 focused on dismantling and rebuilding public structures and government institutions in a bid to strengthen conservative, Christian nationalist political power, the group’s new initiative establishes a roadmap for remaking a more personal institution: the family.
LABOR TROUBLES REDUX … It was interesting to see the labor troubles of the 1900s mirrored in the recent Ski Patrol strike in Telluride…
Many religious parents basically agree that education should help give our children the knowledge and skills they need to forge successful lives and to participate fruitfully in society. Some religious parents, though, see education as about training their children to be followers of that religion.
Twenty-seven members of the Colorado General Assembly are currently committing a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of between $1,000 and $5,000, though it’s unlikely any of them will be charged for it. After all, it’s a misdemeanor which a certain portion of the legislature commits annually and, to my knowledge, no one has ever faced a single consequence for it. What’s the crime? Failing to file their annual personal financial disclosures (PFDs) as mandated by the law.
As tax cuts for the wealthy deepen inequality and threaten health care access for millions, America faces a choice between protecting billionaire fortunes and investing in affordable care.
I’ve been writing about abortion — not “life” or “choice” or “reproductive justice” or whatever euphemism is in vogue — for almost four years and last weekend I finally attended the National March for Life in Washington D.C. Anti-abortion activists have been making annual pilgrimages to D.C. since 1974, demanding an end to what they see as the great evil of our time, amidst a multitude of lesser evils, a daily stream of man-made horrors beyond our comprehension.
