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Identity politics didn’t work for Warren

Was being a woman Elizabeth Warren’s problem? That’s the wrong question. Here’s a better question: Was playing the protector of all damsels from that infamous rake, Mike Bloomberg, her problem? It was one of them, for certain. Look what’s happening in the world. Warren was a candidate of ideas with a strong understanding of the financial system. Her candidacy could have thrived in today’s chaos. But she threw her advantages away to work the inquisitional end of the #MeToo movement. We saw it unfold. In early February, the former New York City mayor was surging in the ...

Saying ‘the Wuhan virus’ isn’t racist

The coronavirus outbreak is the first pandemic of the woke era, and as such it’s not surprising that there is a fierce debate over how to refer to it without offending against social justice. Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona lost whatever sympathy he would have garnered in certain quarters over his self-quarantine when he referred to “the Wuhan virus,” a perfectly appropriate name that has been deemed grotesque and unacceptable. Wuhan is in China, a non-Western country, and people of color live there, so Q.E.D., calling the virus by the name of that city must be racist. ...

Is this how Europe ends?

“Fortress Europe is an illusion.” So declares the Financial Times in the closing line of its Saturday editorial: “Europe Cannot Ignore Syrian Migrant Crisis.” The FT undertakes to instruct the Old Continent on what its duty is and what its future holds: “The EU will face flows of migrants and asylum seekers across the Mediterranean for decades to come.” Can Europe not repel this unwanted home invasion from the Global South? It is “delusional” to think so, says the FT. Europe must be realistic and set about “providing legal routes for migrants and asylum ...

Rights versus wishes

Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “I believe that health care is a right of all people.” He’s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are “rights” to decent housing, decent food, a decent job and prescription drugs. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights? Let’s begin by asking ourselves: What is a right? In the standard usage of the term, a “right” is something that exists simultaneously among people. In the case of our U.S. ...

Robert Durst: Is he a serial killer?

The strange little man currently on trial for a 2000 murder in Los Angles admits he has killed before. He is now charged with putting a 9-millimeter bullet into the head of his longtime friend, Susan Berman, a woman who authorities believe knew his deepest, darkest secrets. In 2001 in Texas, this man admitted he shot his aggressive next-door neighbor in the face. The jury believed his self-defense claim and acquitted him, even though the dead man’s dismembered body parts, found floating in Galveston Bay, did not include the head, which would have either proved or disproved the ...

A glimpse of the plans for the Lordstown plant

It’s been about five years since I walked inside the sprawling Lordstown auto assembly plant that was, at that time, where General Motors workers built passenger vehicles. I was the Tribune Chronicle business editor at that time, writing stories about production of the then-hot selling Chevy Cruze. Last week, invited by new operators of Lordstown Motors Corp., who are preparing to build an all-electric pickup truck, I walked through again, this time with dozens of area political and business leaders. Thursday, the plant was cold, dark and eerily quiet. As one member of the ...