Category: Post-Tribune Opinion

David Pecker, long-time publisher of the National Enquirer and Donald Trump’s close friend, spent hours on the witness stand last week. With the relaxed demeanor of a jovial grandfather, Pecker described how, in 2015, he, candidate Trump, and Michael Cohen met to discuss how they could influence the outcome of the 2016 election. During that meeting, they conspired to hide harmful news, and to embellish fake news to disparage Trump’s rivals. All was done, Pecker testified, with the express and stated intention of promoting Trump’s candidacy for U.S. President. Pecker’s testimony revealed a conspiracy to interfere in the 2106 election […]

In an historic ruling that could change the trajectory of a rapidly heating planet, a court of law with binding jurisdiction over most of Europe has ruled that governments can be held liable for inadequate responses to climate change. The European Court of Human Rights determined that rising temperatures in Switzerland caused direct and tangible health consequences among Swiss citizens, and that governments failing to take adequate steps to mitigate and reduce carbon emissions could owe damages to people hurt by their inaction. Europe could take climate cases in a new direction The ECHR ruling is unprecedented in several respects, […]

In an airstrike last Monday in Syria, Israel’s military displayed the kind of pinpoint accuracy for which the Israeli Defense Force is both known and feared. The IDF’s precision strike hit the Iranian embassy complex on a busy Damascus street, where it was surrounded on all sides by occupied buildings. The strike targeted and killed senior Iranian military commanders and Palestinian militants expressly identified in advance, yet despite the congested area, no civilians were killed. A few hours later, that same “precision” military accidentally killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers who had just delivered and unloaded tons of food […]

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” The ironic statement is from the durable comic strip “Pogo” by cartoonist Walt Kelly, widely syndicated in newspapers from the late 1940s into the 1970s. The observation sums up the essence of our democracy, by definition. Our politics have always been fractious. However, about every 50 […]

On Thursday, Donald Trump’s lawyers appeared in court in Fulton County, Georgia, to argue that election fraud is protected by the First Amendment.

Over the past 50 years, before the GOP went all in on fascism and isolationism, the most dramatic difference between Democrats and Republicans lurked in the driest of places: their tax policies. Democrats essentially wanted to tax the rich to help the middle class and working poor, while Republicans argued that helping the rich would eventually help everyone. Trickle-down economists gave the GOP political cover for decades, providing Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush and Trump the plausible justification they needed to pass massive tax cuts for their donor class. Conservative economists-for-hire claimed that gifts to wealthy individuals and corporations would drive […]

After showing a remarkable lack of interest in the underlying facts, the U.S. Supreme Court has kept an adjudicated insurrectionist — who is, by definition, unfit to be president — on the ballot. Apart from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, during oral argument, the Court asked almost no questions about Colorado’s predicate finding that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection: That on January 6, 2021, following two months of frenzied attempts to overturn his election loss, Trump summoned supporters to the capitol, goaded them with false and incendiary claims that their votes had been “stolen,” then prodded the mob to storm Congress. […]

The only thing more outrageous than vesting the contents of a petri dish with legal rights is the Alabama Supreme Court’s use of religion to get there. Two-thirds of Americans oppose Alabama’s ruling that frozen embryos are children entitled to legal protection, but the ruling is entirely consistent with Republicans’ position that life begins at conception. It also duly followed the contours of the 2022 Dobbs mandate, under which the Supreme Court’s religious bloc subordinated women’s legal rights to those of unborn fetuses. Although Republicans are now scrambling to distance themselves from Alabama’s unpopular ruling, it is the direct result […]

Less than a week after Donald Trump invited Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to American allies, Vladimir Putin had Alexei Navalny, his strongest political adversary, murdered in a Siberian prison. Navalny’s death was but one among a series of tragic consequences flowing from Trump’s fealty to Putin, mirrored in turn by the GOP’s fealty to Trump. Entering the 2024 campaign season, Trump enablers have elevated Trump’s political interests over U.S. national security, leaving Ukraine and the U.S. border vulnerable to an unhinged candidate’s lust for retribution. Trump’s embrace of Putin and antipathy toward Volodymyr Zelenskyy is dangerous. […]

In April 1949, the world reeled from unspeakable horrors. An estimated 85 million people suffered agonizing deaths in WWII — 45 million soldiers were smeared across battlefields; 25 million people starved to death; and 11 million Jews, gays and other minorities drew their last breath in Hitler’s maniacal death camps. Allied forces emerged from the war determined to forge a collective defense for the future. The North Atlantic Treaty established NATO and gave teeth to a free world order governed by the rule of law. Prized for its armed deterrence, NATO delivered somber recognition that although Hitler was gone, the […]