[Abhijith Ravinutala] Compassion should have no religious litmus test

At 7:50 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 29, Azzedine Soufiane was gathered with his family and community for evening prayers. By 8 p.m., he and five other men, all fathers, were murdered by a Canadian right-wing extremist.　Less than 10 minutes separated a peaceful routine from the shock of death, in what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decried as a terrorist attack in a Quebec City mosque. And like most terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in the West, the next day’s news should’ve been filled with storie

March 20, 2017

[Andrew Malcolm] Trump doing what Obama didn’t: Reaching out

Elements of Donald Trump’s presidential style are already emerging and they must be discouraging to his critics.It’s easy to miss things that do not happen. But perhaps you too have noticed a decline in the number of trivial Trump tweets starting spats and news cycles many mornings.　Last week -- are you sitting down? -- Trump canceled a couple of media availabilities. A month ago, he turned down ESPN’s invitation to provide his own NCAA tournament brackets, a free public relations ride on basket

March 20, 2017

[Otherview] Party of ‘No’ struggles for ‘Yes’

There’s a disconnect between the Republican Party leadership, President Trump, conservatives in the House, practical dealmakers in the Senate and those hard-core working-class voters who supported Trump’s election chiefly based on their hatred for President Obama.　　In fact, there are so many disconnections that Republicans’ plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act are starting to be reminiscent of a shade-tree mechanic who boasts as he takes apart a motor -- and then has no idea how to put it

March 19, 2017

[Eryn Sepp] A day without? That is every day

Last week’s “A Day Without a Woman” truly bothered me, as did last month’s “A Day Without Immigrants,” but I could not place why.　But as I pondered my new role as “The Grinch Who Stole ‘A Day Without’” on the train, a realization was knocked loose from the back of my mind: I really take issue with just one word: “without.”　　For so many of our boardrooms and operating rooms, battalions and bylines, every day is a day without women. And immigrants. And people of color. And so many other groups who

March 19, 2017

[Leonid Bershidsky] What the Yahoo hack says about Russian spies

Former Russian domestic intelligence officer Dmitry Dokuchaev won’t appear in a US court to face charges related to the mass 2014 hacking of the Yahoo user database. That’s because he already sits in a Moscow jail, accused of treason. Dokuchaev’s rare achievement in being wanted by both the US and Russian authorities sheds light on what is widely said in the West to be “state-sponsored Russian hacking,” but would more accurately be described as a combination of freelance theft and a concept know

March 19, 2017

[Jay Ambrose] Right vs. left in Trump’s economic plans

President Donald Trump is a populist, a mix of conservative and liberal, and while the conservative side of him is already making the economy sparkle, the liberal side threatens its future. How things play out is anyone’s guess, but right now we can all celebrate a great February jobs report on top of high consumer confidence and zooming stocks.　　The heartening jobs data -- 235,000 new ways for Americans to earn a living -- was accompanied by a slight fall in unemployment rates and a slight budg

March 19, 2017

[Walter Browne] More of us need to say ‘enough’ in face of racism

A beloved family member posted on Facebook that he loves making fun of the “dot-heads” in gas stations. Another family member, a cousin I had not seen in 40 years, connected with me and then posted disparaging comments about immigrants, African-Americans and “libtards.” Then another family member posted a “funny” cartoon of an SUV running over a crowd that read: “All Lives Splatter. I don’t give a f- about your protest.”　Every day in my classroom, I see what family members do not see: real faces

March 17, 2017

[David Ignatius] The real shocker in the WikiLeaks scoop

WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange’s revelation last week of the CIA’s arsenal of hacking tools had a misplaced tone of surprise, a bit like Claude Rains’s famous line in “Casablanca”: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” The hacking community, of which WikiLeaks and the CIA’s cyberwarriors are both aggressive offshoots, has been invading and exploiting every device in sight since the dawn of the digital age. It would be nice if governments, criminals and self-appointed

March 16, 2017

[Cynthia M. Allen] It’s easy to hate and condemn when we refuse to listen

A friend of mine came to visit last weekend.Geography, work and family life mean we no longer have much time to talk, but fortunately, the cliche that we can “pick up right where we left off” aptly applies to our decadelong friendship.We covered a lot of ground in two days, on topics that affirmed how very different we are, both in what we believe and in the lives we lead.She regularly traverses the country for her job.I seldom leave home. I write and care for my children.She’s married to a woma

March 16, 2017

[Rachel Marsden] America's game of footsie with Saudi Arabia

At the top of US President Donald Trump’s tentative daily schedule posted Tuesday morning on Facebook was lunch with Saudi Arabia’s defense minister and deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Perhaps Trump could post the full agenda for that meeting on social media as well. The lack of transparency in recent American-Saudi relations has many of us wondering what the endgame really is for the US.This isn’t your granddaddy’s Saudi Arabia. For decades, America purchased Saudi oil and mostly igno

March 16, 2017

[Gina Barreca] Patriotism more than being born in US

The term “patriotism” is often reduced to its lowest pop culture denominator, dividing us into two groups: the folks who chant Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” by bellowing out the refrain and the ones who listen to the lyrics about a working-class boy who comes home from Vietnam to find that he can’t get a job and that he’s got “nowhere to run” and “nowhere to go.”The rousing chorus can too easily eclipse the despair of Springsteen’s lines about a veteran who has ended up “like a dog that’

March 15, 2017

Right-wingers want to hide Germany’s Nazi past

“We Germans are the only people in the world that have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital.” -- Bjoern Hoecke, German politician and a leading member of Germany’s upstart nationalist party, Alternative for Germany“He who resists dealing with the past is ill-prepared for the future.” -- Wolfgang Schauble, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s finance ministerThe nationalist juggernaut sweeping across Europe has taken an ugly turn in Germany, where leading members of the right-wi

March 15, 2017

[Trudy Rubin] What happens in Iraq after IS is defeated?

This most liberal of Iraqi cities, nestled in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, is a perfect place from which to ponder the impact of the upcoming military defeat of the Islamic State group -- on Iraq and the world.　Suli (its nickname), a low-rise city with a population of around 2 million, is home to the American University of Iraq, Sulaymaniyah, a modern, private co-ed campus, where young men and women (most with hair uncovered) argue unimpeded with their professors in a manner light years awa

March 15, 2017