Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
In my original commentary, I posited the improbable prospect of South Carolina emulating UConn by having both women and men win their respective championships. Sure enough, Carolina women and men won. It’s just that the feat was more north-south than south-south. For the women’s championship, South Carolina played a Mississippi team that seemed still in… Read more.
Presidential daughter Ivanka Trump said Wednesday she will take a formal White House position without pay but will be subjected to federal ethics rules. Her official title will be assistant to the president; her husband, Jared Kushner, has the title of senior adviser, and also does not get paid. (USA Today, March 29, 2017) First, President Trump… Read more.
Organizers hype the annual NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournament as ‘March Madness.’ They do so to exploit ‘the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat’ inherent in low-seeded (a.k.a. Cinderella) teams upsetting top-seeded ones — often with buzzer-beating hail marys. Except that this year’s tournament hasn’t quite lived up to that hype. After all, the… Read more.
Organizers hype the annual NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournament as “March Madness.” They do so to exploit “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” inherent in low-seeded (a.k.a. Cinderella) teams upsetting top-seeded ones — often with buzzer-beating hail marys. Except that this year’s tournament hasn’t quite lived up to that hype. After all, the… Read more.
I commented yesterday that USA Hockey was facing unsustainable pressure to settle its 15-month pay dispute with the 23 players on the women’s national team. I cited growing solidarity in recent days with the players among female members of the US Senate and male players in every major professional sport. But the writing was on… Read more.
The US Women’s National Hockey Team and USA Hockey are locked in sensitive negotiations over pay and benefits, and the clock is ticking. … The women say they will sit out the tournament unless progress is made. The players say their case is about more than money. They want better job benefits for IIHF games… Read more.
Republicans have been exploiting their signature promise to repeal and replace Obamacare for seven years: It helped them win control of the House in 2010. It helped them win control of the House and Senate in 2014. It helped them win control of the House, Senate, and White House in 2016. From day one, some… Read more.
Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak has left the Cairo military hospital where he had been held in custody for much of the past six years, and returned to his home in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, his lawyer said. Mubarak, 88, was acquitted by Egypt’s highest appeals court on 2 March of conspiring to kill… Read more.
The attacker, [a Muslim who police once had on their radar], stabbed the unarmed officer before being shot dead. Forty other people were injured after a car struck pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge, before it crashed. … Speaking in Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergencies committee, Prime Minister Theresa May… Read more.
Chuck Berry, who with his indelible guitar licks, brash self-confidence and memorable songs about cars, girls and wild dance parties did as much as anyone to define rock ‘n’ roll’s potential and attitude in its early years, died on Saturday. … While Elvis Presley was rock’s first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was… Read more.
