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Mike Gallagher’s departure is a bad sign for democracy
U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher was a rising star in the Wisconsin Republican Party before Feb. 10, when he suddenly announced his plans to retire. Heavily recruited to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, he was seen by top Republican strategists as “their best shot to block Baldwin for a third term,” according to Politico. In a […]
Political spin distorts immigration ‘crisis’
A few days after Whitewater, Wisconsin Police Chief Dan Meyer wrote to President Joe Biden asking for federal aid to help cope with an influx of recent migrants to his city, the right-wing news outlet Brietbart jumped on the story, publicizing the letter under the misleading headline: “Biden floods small Wisconsin town with 1,000 migrants.” This […]
How the right’s phony patriotism is destroying America
In his book “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America,” best-selling author Kurt Andersen connects the marketing of nostalgia for an idealized American past to the organized campaign led by big business over the last four decades to destroy unions, public schools, progressive taxation and the middle class. Andersen’s highly readable history provides some bracing context […]
Heartbreaking abuse of children demands a major shift in outlook
News stories about the exploitation of children are particularly upsetting. They violate our most basic protective instincts. How could our society tolerate the systematic abuse of the very young? Yet recent reports on the trafficking of minors in the United States force us to confront our complicity in a grotesque injustice. The blockbuster New York Times […]
Jury finds Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts
Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager who shot three people, killing two of them, during Black Lives Matter protests in downtown Kenosha, was found not guilty of all the charges against him on Friday. The Kenosha County jury in the Rittenhouse murder trial found that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony […]