KENNEDY: With certainty, Cheney is wrong
Cheney angrily defends it all. He has expressed absolutely no remorse for any of it—not even the death of the innocent man.
Sheila Suess Kennedy
Articles
KENNEDY: Failure of imagination could stop here
There is a fair amount of evidence for the proposition that our fraying social fabric is a consequence of the fear and disorientation produced by ever-more-rapid social change.
KENNEDY: A Thanksgiving rumination
For families living on the edge, families struggling just to put that dinner on the table, saving money is a pipe dream.
KENNEDY: A culture of contempt
There are plenty of theories about America’s embarrassingly low turnout rates. My own favorite explanation is a bit of snark from a source I can no longer recall: “If God had intended us to vote, He’d have given us candidates.”
KENNEDY: Election season is almost over (whew)
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 4. (Why in the world do we hold elections on Tuesdays? Why not weekends? But I digress.)
Make voting more convenient
Turnout in the recent vote in Scotland over whether to secede from the United Kingdom was reported to be 85 percent. Turnout in the most recent primary election in Ferguson, Mo., was 12 percent. These are undoubtedly the “poles”—the extremes. Yet … Americans seem evenly divided between those working to increase voter turnout—the League of […]
The Interview Issue: Peter Rusthoven
Why the go-to attorney for Republicans and conservatives is a strict constructionist on the Constitution.
KENNEDY: The age of propaganda
We live in an age of disinformation. Fox News, MSNBC, CNN. Some are better than others, but not much.
KENNEDY: In the country of the blind
Two unrelated articles in the Aug. 31 New York Times brought me up short. The first was yet another analysis of (un)representative government in Ferguson, Mo.; the second addressed the growing power of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ political organization.
KENNEDY: Daniels diminishing higher learning
The current political focus on what we used to call “vocational education” not only minimizes the value of a liberal education, it ignores the reality of today’s job market.
KENNEDY: Indianapolis needs a commuter tax
No matter how nostalgically we think of Indiana as a patchwork of small, quaint towns and family farms, those days are gone. Indiana’s workforce and population are increasingly metropolitan, and our growth will continue to be in our urban centers.
KENNEDY: Buggy whips, rotary phones and coal
he history of business success has been the history of innovation—the triumph of visionary entrepreneurs who saw where the wind was blowing and left their more stubbornly traditional compatriots in the dust.
KENNEDY: We need to connect the civic dots
It isn’t only democratic institutions and behaviors that are affected by profound ignorance of our history and government.
KENNEDY: Maybe it’s a systems failure
Next weekend is the Fourth of July. Along with the barbecues, parades and neighborhood get-togethers, we’ll hear speeches about Truth, Justice and the American Way. We might raise a toast to the Founders, and count ourselves fortunate to live in a (mostly still) democratic country.
KENNEDY: Constitutional convention is idea whose time is not now
Periodically, lawmakers impatient to change government policies of which they disapprove will call for a constitutional convention.
KENNEDY: The luck of the (economic) draw
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently testified before a Senate committee on the issue of America’s growing inequality. His observations were sobering.
KENNEDY: The tax-cutters are too clever by half
Tax cuts have consequences as predictable as the sunrise. The politicians who cut taxes boast about their concern for taxpayers and their superior efficiency; they assure us that our low taxes will lure new business, then they run for higher office or otherwise head for greener pastures where the accuracy of those claims is unlikely to be tested. The politicians who have been left to operate with less money engage in equally predictable behaviors.
KENNEDY: First, eat the spinach
There is probably not a parent on the planet who hasn’t delivered the time-honored dinner lecture, “No dessert unless you eat your vegetables.” We want our children to understand that first things come first—that consuming healthy food has to come before sugary treats, no matter how tempting.
KENNEDY: Hobby Lobby’s unintended consequences
All eyes are on the Hobby Lobby lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court. Most of the commentary revolves around whether a for-profit corporation should be able to disregard a law of general application if that law offends its shareholder/owners’ “sincerely held” religious beliefs.
KENNEDY: My very own litmus test for lawmakers
I’ve been casting about for a shortcut, a vote on an issue that will give me an insight into individual lawmakers. Is he/she irresponsible? Despicable? Crazy?