Author: Terry Schwadron

Republican-dominant State Legislatures Continue to Limit Transgender Rights At first glance, the news story this week about the head of the Texas Agriculture Department, Sid Miller, ordering his employees to dress “in a manner consistent with their biological gender sounded like a joke or hyperbole. It couldn’t be true that a state official would be spending policy time on a dress code or singling out transgender employees. Apart from all else, this is the Agriculture Department. Shouldn’t they be wearing clothing appropriate for doing a food inspection in the fields? Nope, the news was true, and likely in violation of…

Live By the Mouth, Die By the Mouth Fox News cut Tucker Carlson loose, sending his loud, non-rigorous, propagandistic and truth-stretching opinion machine off to the off-the-air darkness. Of course, it was interesting was that Fox would fire its most popular host – who knows, he may try to fight it — because we Americans make idols of celebrities and their fates. But the instant popping of internet Champagne corks felt as if it was a public celebration of the End of Disinformation. To hear pundits discuss the firing and the sudden availability of Tucker Carlson for rival networks or…

The Blame Game Solves Nothing The immigration standoff continues to smolder, with acceptable solutions beyond reach and more deadlines looming. As expiration nears for the so-called Title 42 rules that have used covid as a tool in border management, we saw a House hearing last week erupt in shouting and name-calling rather than solutions, a Republican proposal to virtually ban asylum, and non-legislative moves by the Biden administration moving to use temporary rules to substantially expand the numbers of arrivals from Ukraine and other targeted countries. There are no talks, no apparent attempts at coordination to say nothing of collaboration,…

If Fox Was Sorry, They Would Have Said So in Their Statement Anyone thinking that Fox News had caved to Dominion Voting Systems in reaching a last-minute, whopping $787.5 million settlement of the huge libel lawsuit filed over repeated election lies should check out the network for a few minutes. If Fox was sorry, they would have said so in their statement. The network didn’t do so, only acknowledging that the court had determined that there had been some number of on-air lies in lieu of straight election information. A real apology is what a libel finding usually requires. If…

Texas Governor Is Substituting His Judgment for the Jury’s The sudden disdain we’re seeing among officeholders for the rulings of the courts for clearly partisan gain is stunning. In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is working to set aside all normal legal procedures to pardon an army sergeant who was convicted Friday of killing a protester at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020. On its face, it is hard to digest Abbott’s claim that Daniel Perry, who was working as an Uber driver at the time he drove into a crowd of protesters and ended up shooting Garrett Foster, did so…

The Climate Concern Is Putting Personal Change as Well as Industrial Adaptation on the Table If you live in the West, as I did for many years, you quickly understand that two of the major concerns of the day are water and cars – both of which drew actions from the Biden administration this week, along with responses about burdensome sacrifice. Just as water politics separate Northern and Southern California and feed disputes between agriculture and pool owners, gas pump prices, emissions, and mileage rules govern a disproportionate share of Western public policy concern. The government’s actions this week signal…

It’s Been Going On for a Year and Our Intelligence Array Didn’t Notice? All week, a mystery had lingered about who stood to gain from the released photos of classified documents that have threatened intelligence about the war in Ukraine and that certainly have proved embarrassing to the United States. We appear to have the answer. After reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times published stories pointing to him, the FBI arrested Jack Texeira, 21, a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, naming him as a leader of the leaking group. According to a friend of his who spoke…

Thankfully We Still Have Journalists Once again, courtesy of journalists rather than those whose job it is to police such affairs, the private life decisions of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have left him in what looks like open violation of federal court ethics standards. As a result, we’re seeing the public trust and backing of the Supreme Court as an institution fall another notch. And, once again, because it involves Justice Thomas and his wife, an outspoken proponent of election denial, reactions to the reports are dripping in political sarcasm, layering the whole question with larger questions about our…

Somewhere amid all the drama surrounding Donald Trump’s meet up with the justice system yesterday must have been a moment of humility in which even Trump, who seems to believe that the sun and moon orbit about him, had to realize that he was not in charge. Whatever moments of indignity there may be in a forced surrender and ignoble court processing, in an arraignment meant to underscore the seriousness of public criminal charges, even this monumental ego must have recognized a flicker or two of doubt before once again allowing his inflatable, bulbous image to puff up anew. The…

We’re seeing a recurring theme in the words from our Republican leaders: They can’t take in information, even when they see it first-hand – all now amplified by the indictment of Donald Trump over what may be a series of inflaming criminal charges. Instead, with the myopia of partisanship, all incoming data needs to wash through a purifying lens first to fit into preconceived conclusions that translate into politics or policy. That particular practice puts them at odds with Democrats, who report seeing a consistently different set of data – however wrong their interpretation or suggested fix may prove to…