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State lawmakers must act promptly on 3 critical issues

The official start of summer this weekend also ushers in the end of state lawmaking in Columbus. Yes, the long summer recess gives our technically part-time state legislators time to relax and regroup in their home districts while gathering constituent input on a wide swath of crucial unfinished business that awaits them in the fall. Much of that unfinished business centers on controversial issues that require closure by the end of the year. Placed high atop that action agenda must be property tax reform, data center regulation and the death penalty. To its credit, this session of ...

Removal of Trump’s name a metaphor?

In what could be a metaphor for things to come, workers removed President Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center in Washington. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the rebranding of the Kennedy Center as the “Trump Kennedy Center” violated the law, writing, “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.” Is America growing tired of Trump’s nonstop appearances? His disapproval ratings suggest overexposure could be a contributing factor. He goes on sometimes for more than an hour in his frequent Oval Office appearances and often repeats ...

Politician names on public works are free ads

When workers scraped Donald Trump’s name off the Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, they should have kept going. They should have taken Kennedy’s name off as well and restored the building to its original, simple title, the National Culture Center. After President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Congress renamed the center after him. The New York International Airport, charmingly referred to as Idlewild, suddenly became the John F. Kennedy International Airport. And hundreds of schools across the country plastered “John F. Kennedy” on their ...

It’s a requiem for privacy

When President Donald Trump appointed an obviously unqualified friend, a home builder executive, to be acting director of national intelligence, he inadvertently triggered attention to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The director of national intelligence is the head of the umbrella agency that gathers intelligence from the 17 federal spying agencies and from that data prepares and delivers the president’s daily briefing. Sec. 702, which permits warrantless spying, expires this month. Trump prefers to receive his briefings directly from the CIA and its foreign ...

Anthony’s race doesn’t matter

The system failed Karmelo Anthony — he stabbed someone to death and is going to jail for it. If this doesn’t strike you as an injustice, you haven’t been paying attention to the voices defending the 19-year-old who was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for murdering another teenager at a high school track meet in Texas two years ago. The case has garnered national attention entirely for its racial angle. Anthony is black, and his victim, Austin Metcalf, was white. But there is no evidence that race played a role in the incident, and if both young men had been white or both ...

Platner’s populist challenge excites Dems — cautiously

When I heard President Donald Trump go ballistic over Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, it made me want to hear more about Graham Platner. After Platner won Maine’s Democratic primary last week, Trump trolled Platner as “thug” and called the Democratic Party hypocritical for lining up behind someone with so many questions about his past personal conduct and treatment of women. “He’s worse than any human being that’s ever run for office probably,” the president said. Well, if anyone should know about questions on past conduct and treatment of women, it ...