Author: Lance Garrison
The editorial board recently highlighted the need for the Supreme Court to reach a swift resolution in considering Donald Trump’s extraordinary claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for all time and for anything he might do, even after leaving office.However far-fetched that claim might be, it has reached the Supreme Court, and until the justices issue their ruling on it, Trump’s criminal trial for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol cannot go forward. Every day of delay will diminish the chances of reaching a verdict in that case before Election Day.The justices have…
To the Editor:Re “Biden Gambles on Trump Fear and Star Clout” (front page, Jan. 30):I was a bit dismayed by your article about Joe Biden’s apparent campaign plan to run on basically just not being Donald Trump. Courting Taylor Swift and other celebrities is fine and all, Joe, but please don’t make yourself simply the lesser of two evils.You won last time on social justice and the environment, and by really promising to help millions of people struggling to ride out the Covid-19 pandemic, and following through on those promises. You didn’t win on fear. Nobody wins on fear.Yes, for…
In 2018, Michael B. Greene, PhD, received a letter that took his breath away. A woman who might be his biological daughter was looking to connect. He knew it was possible. In the 1970s, he donated sperm many times to make some extra cash as a graduate student in New York City. At the time, he’d signed an anonymity contract. “Every once in a while, later on, I would think maybe I’d bump into somebody on the streets of New York who looked like me,” says Greene, a developmental psychologist in Montclair, NJ. “That was the extent of my thought.” Michael…
Hey, Tom Suozzi beat Mazi Pilip. Are you excited?OK, I know it was only a congressional race in the New York suburbs. But he stomped her! The Democrats had been truly afraid that voters would be too cranky about the border and Biden Boredom to rally around a career politician whose greatest claim to fame was quite possibly his time as Nassau County executive.Suozzi hardly super-embraced Biden. (“The bottom line is he’s old.”) But he was certainly less standoffish about his party’s leader than Pilip, a Republican who spent most of the campaign declining to say who she’d voted for…
In this environment, Haass wrote:Our foes sense opportunity; our friends and allies are beginning to hedge and will have to choose some mix of accommodating powerful neighbors, becoming more self-reliant, and/or finding alternative partners. The result will be a world of diminished US influence and diminished order, all of which will come back to haunt us.The bigger problem, Haass pointed out,is that we have become unreliable and unpredictable. It is not a matter of capability, although we are short of what we need given the many challenges, but rather will and consensus, even when the costs are relatively modest. We…
A senior Hamas leader this month declared that any deal to end the fighting in Gaza must include the release of Marwan Barghouti. Three weeks before, a former Israeli security chief had identified Marwan Barghouti as “the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel.”His name may not be familiar to many Americans. But most Palestinians, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, know it well. So do many senior Israelis. Thirty or so years ago, Mr. Barghouti was among the most promising of a new generation of Palestinians poised to succeed Yasir Arafat, the revolutionary…
To recap my 2022 discussion with Flanagan, since the 1970s, we’ve cut funding for parks and recreation departments, with a notable drop during the Great Recession. With the potential for billions of dollars to be made, the youth sports industrial complex became more expensive and demanding. As private travel leagues with high fees and top-caliber coaches have skimmed off the best players, it’s become a vicious cycle, with underfunded local rec leagues struggling to compete.In defense of the parents sacrificing so much for those travel leagues, they are making a rational decision in an absurd market, one that’s particularly acute…
The flare of inflation reported this week, the unwelcome guest still hanging around when everyone was hoping he’d been shown the door, is a useful reminder of one way to understand the Biden era’s frustrations. The administration’s defenders often argue that it has been more successful at legislating and policymaking than it’s given credit for, and there’s some truth to that contention. The trouble is that the White House has mostly been successful at implementing an economic agenda addressed to the discontents of the mid-2010s — even as the problems of the 2020s, inflation above all, have made those issues…
When Bert Ellison experienced intense mood swings, the first person he turned to was usually not his wife, but Dan Driscoll, his close friend of more than two decades. During the first year of his Ph.D. program, Mr. Ellison was an emotional yo-yo, one day telling his wife that he wanted to quit, the next that all was well. Mr. Driscoll suggested that Mr. Ellison take the concerns to him first, easing the stress on their marriage.“I didn’t make a vow to Dan on my wedding day,” Mr. Ellison told me, “but I’m able to uphold my vows, I think,…
Prescription drugs heal us when we’re sick, ease our pain when we ache, and prevent or control long-term conditions. But sometimes, even when they do the job they’re supposed to, they have unwelcome side effects.Don’t let that make you automatically rule out a medication, especially if it’s an important part of managing a health condition. But you shouldn’t accept unpleasant reactions without question, either.Side effects can happen with almost any medicine, says Jim Owen, doctor of pharmacy and vice president of practice and science affairs at the American Pharmacists Association. They’re common with everything from birth control pills to cancer-fighting…