Leonard Pitts Jr.: Ignorance is death

The threat turns out to be more visceral and urgent than any of us could have imagined. Yes, some people live in alternate realities. What’s worse, though, is when they have power to impose those realities on the rest of us. That’s what we’re seeing in Tennessee and elsewhere, and the results will be as tragic as they are predictable and preventable.

Froma Harrop: Not getting your shot can cost you your job

No one has to get the shot, but no one should have to employ those who won’t. Playtime is over.

Cartoon for Sunday, July 18

John Wade: Questioning GOP’s support of Trump

I wondered why one of our major political parties, the GOP, went crazy and decided to worship Donald Trump. So I decided to see if there was an answer to my questions online. National Public Radio featured a study titled: “Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support.” Professor Lilliana Mason said the study was […]

Saul Anuzis: Protect drug access in Medicare

Ask Americans to name a problem with our healthcare system, and you’ll hear a range of answers, from insurance bureaucracy to overbooked doctors to the inadequacies of Medicaid. Only a very few will name Medicare’s drug benefit, known as Part D.

Cal Thomas: Zaila and the Bee

People who are tenacious, overcome obstacles and succeed used to be part of the American story, a story we were happy to share to encourage others. What happened to it? Why do we focus less on success and more on envying and penalizing the successful? Why is there the constant drumbeat in our politics and most of the media about the unsuccessful and the proposals by certain politicians to throw good money after bad on programs that have mostly not worked?

In rebuttal: Claude Bergeron: ‘Structurally racist system’ must be changed

The conclusion of Kevin Landry’s guest column (“Time to move on from a cancerous past,” July 11) misses the point. Yes, our ancestors suffered many indignities and prejudices when we emigrated from Quebec to make a better life for ourselves. (David Vermette, who Landry quotes, also likens our experience to that of today’s Somali immigrants.) […]

Cartoon for Saturday, July 17

Stephen Carnahan: A first step to break racism’s hold

What, exactly, does a thug look like? In the July 14 article reporting that an internal State Police review found no racial profiling by Trooper John Darcy, this is the unanswered question. Police authorities were right to be concerned that Trooper Darcy made this statement. What exactly, I’d like to know, made him think that […]

Bob Neal: The Countryman: Keeping it all together

Ronald Reagan assembled and held together a coalition of fundamentalists and big business that seem about as likely to be bedfellows as are peaches and frisbees. But Reagan got and kept the peaches and frisbees together, and Republicans won six of 11 presidential elections.