We are a nation of immigrants. Democrats and Republicans have rightly embraced this foundational story for decades. The noblest articulation is embodied in the Emma Lazarus inscription on the Statue of Liberty. It is also true that, at various times throughout our history, a nasty nativist streak has led to anti-immigrant violence and punitive anti-immigrant …
Continue reading Immigration reform tops list of unmet needs
Just when you thought Donald Trump had already taken the Presidency as low as it could go, he asked, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries coming here?" Our esteemed President, according to credible reports, told a group of bipartisan legislators Thursday he didn't want Haiti, El Salvador and African nations sending …
Lincoln/Douglas it was not. Last night's Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders face-off in Florida was substantive but problematic. The debate was feisty, often angry, occasionally misleading but, like the one in Flint, Michigan the week before, on a much higher level than GOP debates, but that's not a high bar. Clinton is engaging, smart and the most …
Years ago, Barbara Bush is said to have commented that son Jeb was the best politician in the family. That's the side of the former Florida governor that I saw in New Hampshire on Friday morning at the Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College. The hall was filled to overflowing and the boyish looking, …
Continue reading Jeb Bush – for now, more appealing than appalling
Most of us probably find ourselves somewhere around the center of contemporary political thought, whether it's to the right of center or left of center. Our movement in elections often determine outcomes, and we're usually out of touch with outliers in both parties. We are unsettled by a Congress now with an increasingly hollowed out center, …
Continue reading Ideological purity no help to the body politic
I always thought that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was the brat, the youngish sharp-elbowed, supercilious, conservative Congressman assumed to be John Boehner's heir apparent as Speaker of the House. Bookish. Dogmatic. So determined was he to be the ideological antidote to a liberal Obama administration, he was a driving force behind the Republican congressional strategy to …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 