Bill Blum: We all know that nothing constructive will come from Trump’s safety commission. After Parkland, the best the commission could offer was the arming of teachers. In the meantime, we’ve come to embrace mass shootings as routine features of everyday life.
Law and Justice
Trump, the NRA, Mass Shootings and the American Culture of Death
Difficult Positions: The Death Penalty and Nikolas Cruz
Laura Finley: Despite the horrors that Cruz levied, I still do not want to see him executed. I universally oppose the death penalty. That is not a particularly easy position to hold right now, in this case, but I believe it is the right one. It is for me, at least.
Terminal Velocity
I Went to Flagstaff for a Commencement
Paul Haeder: Consumerism as a psychological wedge to allow for the synchronized event horizon of finance-government-surveillance-media-military to work on the masses as a suffocating fog pumped out across the globe by an elite bent on total dominance.
Defense
Why Is It Bad News When Military Spending Declines?
WJ Astore: The sober, sane, thing to do, according to military experts, is always to expand military spending.
Rethinking Weapons Exports
Kristin Christman: What’s the use of all that science in developing weapons if there’s no science in evaluating the application of weapons to real world problems?
Healthcare Reform
Trump’s Drug Pricing Scam
Robert Reich: While it’s true that Americans spend far more on medications per person than do citizens in any other rich country – even though Americans are no healthier – that’s not because other nations freeload on American drug companies’ research.
Robert Reich: While it’s true that Americans spend far more on medications per person than do citizens in any other rich country – even though Americans are no healthier – that’s not because other nations freeload on American drug companies’ research.
Feedback Friday
Friday Feedback: Trumpery
Phil Barnes-Roberts: Ol’ Sam Clemens had a lot to say about scalawags and assorted conmen (mostly assumed male then, in the era between Halley’s Comet passes that framed Twain’s life).
Elections & Campaigns
California’s Millennial Candidates Threaten Political Establishment
Anna Keeve: While household names and heavy hitter corporate-funded candidates are spending big bucks to make sure they are heard, there is a horde of lesser-known rising-star candidates swarming onto the political scene
Primary Day: Lessons for Democrats
RJ Eskow: Democrats should be concerned about the decline in voter participation among African Americans in 2016.
Education
County Ballot Measures Would Fund Child Care, Early Education
Jessica Goodheart: Research that shows early childhood education can profoundly impact the future success of children. But early childhood educators are still chronically underpaid.
Why Do Some People Hate College?
Steve Hochstadt: The distrust of political conservatives for intellectuals and higher education has been a feature of our politics for half a century.
Immigration Reform
Questioning Our Declaration on Human Rights
Samantha Banuelos: Before immigrants even cross the border into the United States, they are faced with situations that no human being should ever have to experience—often originating in flight from brutal cartels or corrupt armed forces.
Title: “Latina/o Immigrants in the Racist Era of Trump”
Alvaro Huerta: The “Hustler-in-Chief” lies so much, it must be difficult for him—along with his lackey apologists and fellow liars, like John F. Kelly, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, etc.—to keep track of all his lies.
California
Forget North and South Korea: California and Texas Need a Peace Summit
Joe Mathews: Regular California-Texas summits would remind us that, while we will never be the most cohesive country, we are a collection of states that requires some unity.
