Stephen Gottlieb

Some Democrats want their party to choose a stronger candidate than Biden. That reminds me of Pogo’s comment, “We have met the enemy and they is us.” Decisions are now made in primaries; no organization decides who’ll be the candidates. And nobody wants to run against Biden.

I write this after listening to the arguments in the US Supreme Court over Colorado’s disqualification of Mr. Trump from the ballot.

States are prohibiting teaching about events none of us will ever forget. They’re banning history and discussion of the damage done by years of violence and discrimination. But Paul Murray did his part in keeping it available.

South Africa brought a case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

Since World War II, Israel has relied on its firepower to stay alive.

I was rather disturbed by the news that St. Rose would close. I’ve admired many things St. Rose did, and a friend’s daughter lived with us while studying there. And it’s our neighborhood. Although we’ve lived in two different places, we’ve always been in walking distance from the college. Who will close and what will the neighborhood be like after St. Rose?

New York is going through another round of legislative districting. I fear the results because I hear little real understanding of what gerrymandering is and why it’s a problem.

To get Social Security through Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt thought about the language. He didn’t package it as a benefit for any class of people – it was for everyone. It wasn’t a benefit; it was insurance. And it didn’t require going to some welfare office; it went through the Post Office. Roosevelt understood that language matters. President Johnson’s War on Poverty was about poverty, and Appalachia, not race. But the Erie Canal, one of the most important projects in the history of America, got held up for forty years by what’s-in-it-for-me objections.

Listen and I’ll tell you a Christmas story. Let me tell you what Dickens was really trying to tell us. This is not a story the greedy Grinches want you to know. But it is an American story. And it is a story that rang throughout the world until greedy politicians tried to tell you it wasn’t good for you and me.

Bill Mckibben, distinguished climate activist and founder of 350.org and Third Act, wrote, in The Crucial Years, that the recently concluded UN international climate summit in Dubai, may have handed activists “a new tool,” because the agreement included one sentence calling for “‘transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.’"