Category Opinion

The $2 trillion infrastructure trap

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emerged from the White House after meeting with President Donald Trump. They announced that Trump and congressional Democrats had agreed to spend $2 trillion on a big infrastructure package. It’s amazing how chummy partisans can…

Let your passion lead you

There seem to be two schools of thought on the role of schools in the lives of our children: some think that schools should do most of the raising of our kids; others think that education in school should be coupled with life education in…

LETTER: The scourge of fentanyl

To the Editor: Fentanyl is the strongest opiate on the streets right now and it’s estimated to be 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin. Not only is fentanyl sold on the streets “as is,” but it’s also mixed into…

The cathedral and the path to renewal

The burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, a monument to human creativity and divine inspiration, invites first a mournful silence and then a search for meaning. This often involves efforts to understand the inexplicable by reference to metaphor. That this ancient place of worship burned during…

The anxiety of living in the U.S. today

The lengthy life for this writer is attributable, in part, to birth in the United States. In fact, there have been only two periods during my life when serious wonder arose by “the end” appearing imminent. The two periods were characterized by protracted migraine-like headaches, resulting…

HB 2797: The definition of insanity

One of the many bills under consideration in the Oregon Legislature this year would erect a giant barrier to seeking help when a drug overdose occurs, and more dishearteningly, it is a backslide into anti-drug policy proven not to work. Oregon House Bill 2797 would…

There was no collusion Rep. Schiff

President Donald Trump called on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to resign from Congress. That, of course, is not going to happen. Even after special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy or coordination between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian actors, Schiff told The Washington…

Turkey’s president is a case study

History shows that when revolutions occurred in human civilizations—recent and ancient—a huge number of people involved believed the outcomes would advantage them. However, the specifics in many examples reveal that, after peace returned, one man, sometimes a woman, established a stranglehold that resulted, save for a…