Washington — When the racist chant began Wednesday night — “Send her back! Send her back!” — President Trump paused to let the white-supremacist anger he had stoked wash over him. George Wallace would have been so proud. That moment at a Trump campaign rally in North Carolina was the ...
To the editor: I want to thank Lawrence school board member Kelly Jones for raising questions about the School Resource Officer (SRO) program. The July 17 Journal-World editorial suggests that if a program has existed 18 years it doesn’t need to be questioned. I don’t understand that logic ...
To the editor: After watching the recorded chants of “Send her back” at his North Carolina hate rally Wednesday, I conclude that President Donald John Trump and his followers are committing federal hate crimes. The line has been crossed. Even small children are being encouraged to chant. ...
To the editor: Reading the weather reports this week made me think it is a good time to give a shout out to Willis Carrier (1876-1950). Although he is no longer around to hear the accolade, I do sing his praises on these toasty summer days for having invented the air conditioner. Kansas’s ...
Here’s how The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group. It is, they say, “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, ...
San Francisco — A 29-story office building at 123 Mission St. illustrates the policy puzzles that fester because of these facts: For centuries, tobacco has been a widely used legal consumer good that does serious and often lethal harm when used as it is intended to be used. And its ...
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia — As America’s confrontation with Iran deepens in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. military is rushing more than 500 troops to Saudi Arabia, its key partner in the region. The grim but necessary task is to deter Iran and prepare for war, if deterrence fails. It’s time for ...
The news that a Kansas legislator is resigning midterm for health reasons presents a good opportunity to think about the process that Kansas uses to fill legislative vacancies. This is probably not an enthralling topic to most, but it matters because that process is a rotten anachronism that ...
Washington — Susan Brooks. Brian Fitzpatrick. Will Hurd. Fred Upton. You may have read or heard these names in passing, but they are worth lingering upon. These are the four Republicans who supported a resolution condemning President Trump’s plainly racist taunt urging four House members ...
To the editor: A big shout-out to the employees in municipal services and operations, particularly those working in the pavement management (pothole repair) and the solid waste divisions. Lawrence roads took a beating after the long winter and heavy rains this past spring, and keeping the many ...
To the editor: Our president gave a speech last week in which he delivered some of his most significant lies. Why so significant? Because unless his lies are understood, they will make life much more dangerous for my grandchildren and yours. We all know that he has in fact openly lied ...
To the editor: It was the summer of 1971, and a crowd had gathered at the Dubuque, Iowa, airport, awaiting the arrival of our first refugees from Vietnam. Father Thomas Rhomberg represented Catholic Charities, I was with the Dubuque Area Council of Churches, and U.S. Rep. Tom Tauke from ...
To the editor: Shirley Halladay (July 16 letter to the editor) offers a prayer to her God for protection from all who don’t look like her. All who would make our country and Lawrence less desirable and attractive because they are more unemployable, more homeless or more likely to bring crime ...
Dear Donald Trump: Years ago, I got to visit Kwethluk, an Alaskan town of fewer than 900 souls. It is an isolated place where the people, most of them Yup’ik and Eskimo, live on what the tundra provides: ptarmigan, moose, seal, salmonberries. I remember standing upon that snowbound landscape ...
Washington — Thirty months after setting the goal of sending a mission 239,000 miles to the moon, and returning safely, President John Kennedy cited a story the Irish author Frank O’Connor told about his boyhood. Facing the challenge of a high wall, O’Connor and his playmates tossed their ...
Muscat, Oman — Here’s the most intriguing fact about Iran’s apparent seizure on Saturday of a small oil tanker about 240 miles northwest of here: Thus far, it has brought only a muted response from the United Arab Emirates, in whose waters the vessel had been operating, and from the ...
As someone who was lucky enough to cover the 1992 presidential campaign —involving Republican incumbent President George W. Bush, Democratic challenger Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and the independent maverick Texas billionaire businessman Ross Perot — from start to finish, allow me to make ...
At a joint meeting of Lawrence city commissioners and school board members last week, a debate broke out on whether there is value in local police officers serving as resource officers in the community’s public schools. At the same time that meeting was underway, construction crews were ...
To the editor: There have been recent reports that Social Security will be in serious trouble in a few years because it will run out of money to keep the government’s promises to millions of people. That was true in the 1980s too. I was the editor of a national trade magazine in Peoria, ...
Washington — For many, summer is the literary season of lighter novels at the beach or pool. For me — exhausted by the quickening pace of President Trump’s moral and mental disintegration — escape takes the form of reading works of fiction that I have often read before. Encountering a ...
