VOICES

PROGRESSIVE POLITICS - Here's a dirty secret: Great nations rest on a great common culture.

GUN CONTROL - Eighteen miles south of the Central Valley home that was her prison, down Highway 99 past almond orchards and trucks overloaded with hay bales, sits the Madera County Superior Court.

VOICES - Drama, drama! There’s a shortage of toilet paper, of lumber, of second-hand cars. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN - I am quite aware that many of you reading this are entirely unable to impartially weigh one side or another with respect to pros and cons of any given leadership in Washington or at home.

POP PHENOM - Fourscore and three years ago, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter—a self-titled “musicianer” who was heralded as a “Bad Nigger” who “makes good minstrel” by Life magazine—explained how he came to create one of the first racism* carols.

RACIAL RECKONINGS - When you’re losing the game, summon the commies!

VOICES - The Committee to Recall LA Councilman Mike Bonin filed 39,164 signatures today with the LA City Clerk’s Office that in all probability will be placed on the ballot in a special municipal election once the signatures are verified and his time as an elected official may soon come to a close.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS - In a provocative recent essay in the New York Times, the political historian Jon Grinspan places the distemper currently afflicting American politics in a broader context. In essence, he contends that we’ve been here before.

COMMENTARY - In late 2021, when Americans think of progressive or liberal politics, what do they think of?

TRUMPISM - The Orange Beast Runs Free, Dreaming of Vengeance.  Two seemingly separate news stories are darkly and intimately related to each other in ways that you will not see intelligently discussed on “Meet the Press” or “Washington Week.”

ANTI VAXX - Dear Aaron Rodgers,

VOTING RIGHTS - My Dad skated for the Minnesota Gophers hockey team after he finally got done serving “for the duration” in World War II in the Philippines.