In the rush to replace Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court, we’ve heard a lot of praise from Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s supporters about her role as a mother, including references to the fact that she will be the first “working mother with school-age children” to sit on the highest court. Interestingly, however, raising children is rarely, if ever, commented on when men are being considered for high-profile public service jobs, even though many of the men who have sat on the Supreme Court bench have also been parents.
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In the 16 years I’ve lived in this exact spot, I’ve been no stranger to disaster. It’s been two years since Hurricane Florence roared through and devastated my community, and I’m still walking around on barely repaired floors looking up at barely repaired ceilings. Every time I see news of a new storm — in Texas, or Puerto Rico, or Florida, or Louisiana...
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It’s been seven months since the COVID-19 pandemic turned life upside down in North Carolina, but it feels like seven years. In just over 200 days, we’ve seen at least a quarter-million of our neighbors contract the coronavirus and 4,000 die. Nationally, more than 8 million people have become infected and 220,000 have perished. And, of course, these tragic statistics are far from the only gloomy news.
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[Editor’s note: The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on President Trump’s nomination of appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court this Thursday. Last week, in response to the public hearings the committee held at which it heard from Barrett and a number of outside experts, two veteran journalists – Ruth Conniff of the Wisconsin Examiner and Quentin Young of Colorado Newsline -- published powerful essays (reproduced below) in which they explored Barrett’s extreme views and why they should disqualify her from serving on the high court....
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In a time of multiple and unprecedented challenges to individuals and societal well-being, our nation badly needs to pull back from the growing acrimony that plagues us and revisit our many shared values. It won’t be easy to gradually return to patient talking – and listening – to each other. However, lessons from the ongoing global pandemic provide a critically important opportunity to spring forward to “a better normal” in dealing with the even larger crisis of climate change.
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Potential demise of health care law leaves millions – especially women – on the brink The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been one of the most significant advancements for women’s health and economic security in a generation. The law expanded coverage to millions of uninsured people through financial assistance and public insurance and also improved the quality of existing coverage, including by expanding access to reproductive and maternal health services and by prohibiting discrimination against women and people with preexisting conditions.
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The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar – and unquestionably mistaken – interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot to overthrow Michigan’s government and kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
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Image: Adobe Stock It would be silly to pretend that the United States is not currently experiencing an extraordinary, and extraordinarily challenging, historical moment. The impact of a virulent global health pandemic on a nation that was already sharply divided along several major fault lines – ideological, economic, racial, religious – has been significant. Add to this roiling stew a hotly contested national election that is widely perceived to be one of the most important in decades, and one has a recipe for discord on a giant scale.
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A caregiver for her terminally ill friend contracted COVID. Not only did it make dying — and grieving — more difficult, but it also unveiled the shortcomings of the U.S. health care system.
My best friend didn’t die of COVID-19. But COVID-19 would make a huge difference in the way she died.
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It’s hard to believe today but it wasn’t that long ago that it was considered a possibly significant liability in Ronald Reagan’s campaign for the presidency in 1980 that he would become, at the time, the first divorced person to assume the presidency. Reagan clearly wasn’t the first president to have experienced something other than a completely happy and monogamous marriage throughout his adulthood, but somehow the idea that his marital problems were publicly known and not just the province of a nodding and winking D.C. press corps, was thought to be potential major liability.
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As we begin the third contest over a Supreme Court appointment since 2016, it’s apparent to more Americans that unelected lifetime appointments to our highest court represent more than just partisan insider political battles. The decisions made at the U.S. Supreme Court can and do impact our everyday lives, and in a democracy we should have a say in these appointments.
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