Commentary
Vaccine mandates have always faced resistance and saved lives | Opinion
Health care professionals had high hopes that rapid vaccination of our entire U.S. population would slow COVID-19 transmission and stem the disproportionately high death count in the United States. We also hoped to avoid more concerning mutations that are inevitable when viruses multiply unchecked. I lost my mother to COVID-19 in November of 2020, less […]
Stupid legislator tricks: Mendacity, malevolence, monkey business at FL’s Capitol
OCCUPIED TALLAHASSEE — Well, that got stupid fast. The legislative session is only two weeks old and the reliably witless Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Somewhere Up Trump’s Rump) is moving a bill to fine professional sports teams if they don’t play the national anthem. Wait, you say, aren’t the Heat and the Magic, the Bucs and […]
In Year Two, no more Mr. Nice Biden, please
About halfway through his marathon news conference last week, President Joe Biden finally asked the only question in Washington that’s worth asking. With congressional Republicans standing in the way of the Democrats’ every initiative, including voting rights (which should be as bipartisan as it gets), what do they actually support? “What are Republicans for? What […]
Kyrsten Sinema is gambling that her filibuster vote will help her win again in 2024
The furious Democrats who revile Kyrsten Sinema don’t know her very well. She may not have single-handedly derailed President Joe Biden’s presidency by ensuring that none of his ambitious legislative agenda ever reaches his desk, but Arizona’s senior senator certainly has become the face of the Democrats’ circular firing squad. And her highly choreographed speech […]
Bills would help consultants make a killing off of killing off Florida’s seagrass
I have two kids, so believe me when I tell you that all parents are terrible liars. We constantly use what I call “feel-good lies” to make our kids feel better about the world we live in — even if our lying sometimes leads to bad results. “Santa Claus brought you those gifts,” we tell […]
In the volatile summer of 1966, young reporter Lucy Morgan met M. L. King Jr. in Grenada, Miss.
Watching the nation’s political figures react to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday this week reminds me of the day I met King and the many messages of that day. It happened in the summer of 1966, when I was just a year into a career as a reporter. I happened to be visiting relatives in […]
About the GOP’s historical amnesia on voting rights
If you get into an argument with a Republican about the GOP’s lamentable support for voting rights and its fractured relationship with Black Americans, it won’t be long before your rhetorical sparring partner bellows “Robert Byrd” at you and declares the argument over. The logic here, if it even can be called that, is that […]
Actually, y’all, some of us would prefer facts with our politics
OCCUPIED TALLAHASSEE — In the first speech of his 2024 presidential campaign, not-so-cunningly disguised as the “State of the State” address, Ron DeSantis declared, We have made Florida the freest state in these United States. And the freedoms just keep coming. Florida women will be free from controlling their own bodies. DeSantis supports a bill […]
Florida legislators get away with their Amendment 1 heist — for now
The Florida Legislature convened Tuesday for its regular 60-day session, so I hope you boarded up your windows and got your family to a shelter. This is not a traditional storm but rather a time when, as Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell put it recently, “Tallahassee will be filled with more manure than a pasture […]
Senate Republicans’ ejection of media from chamber hurts all Iowans
The 2022 session of the Iowa Legislature will begin today, much as lawmakers have convened for most of the past 175 years: with speeches and ceremony, the reuniting of friends and the renewal of partisan enmity. One significant difference: The Iowa Senate will exclude the Statehouse media from access to the floor of the chamber. […]
A case for Mike Pence as heroic in the face of the pro-Trump attempted coup
I come to celebrate an American hero. I come to celebrate Mike Pence. That is not, to put it mildly, a widely held opinion. Not yet, at least. The Trumpian right reviles Pence as a traitor, as a Judas whose lack of courage and commitment a year ago cost them the prize that they see […]
Jan. 6 succeeded. Here’s what’s next.
If the point of the Jan. 6 insurrection was to establish that a significant portion of the country is done with democracy, it succeeded. The attack on the U.S. Capitol one year ago by violent supporters of former President Donald Trump — whose lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him was the fuel […]