Time for Democrats to take stand on abortion
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, July 13, 2009
In the national debate on health care, there is a major effort stirring to block abortion coverage in the plans that emerge. If abortion becomes a disposable pawn in this political game, then the Democrats will have betrayed women.
Court was right to douse ‘disparate impact’ fire
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, July 6, 2009
When race is involved no case is minor, but Ricci v. DeStefano gained blockbuster status after the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. She was part of an appellate panel that threw out the claims of the 18 white firefighters, one of whom is Hispanic, who lost out on promotions due to the actions of the city of New Haven, Conn.
Health insurers face day of reckoning
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, June 29, 2009
What we have learned about free-market health insurance is that even when one can get an individual policy, it is often like having no insurance at all. A standard in the industry is to look for ways to reap premiums, then skip out on promised benefits. This is what the status-quo Republicans are fighting to retain.
How one woman fought an undertow
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Terry Martin Hekker woke up one day to find that powerful forces both personal and societal had conspired to upend her life and drag her down.
Obama’s wrong turn on detention
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, June 15, 2009
As President Obama tries to clean up the Bush administration mess surrounding the terror suspects housed in Guantanamo, he is flirting with cementing in law some of the worst excesses of the Bush/Cheney regime.
Widespread acceptance of gay marriage just a matter of time
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, June 1, 2009
The speed at which gay marriage went from a wedge issue that Republicans used during the 2004 election to roust religiously conservative voters to the polls, to its wide acceptance today, is nothing short of a political tsunami. Five states have now legalized same-sex marriage either by statute or court order.
Can CIA Really be Trusted on Briefing Flap?
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Tuesday, May 26, 2009
All this faux patriotic indignation over the suggestion that the CIA misled Congress in briefings over detainee treatment is just raw political theater.
Young people strike a blow for reasoned discourse
- Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Imagine if cable news and talk radio were dominated by commentators who subscribed to this ethic rather than the pulsing-neck-vein types. How refreshing it would be if our political discourse was awash in tempered, reasoned argument instead of frothing snideness
Jeb Bush epitomizes vegetative state of Republican Party
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, May 11, 2009
I view the prospect of tapping Jeb Bush to bring the concerns of average Americans into the Republican Party as a little like asking the Real Housewives of New Jersey to live on a budget -- it’s an exercise so improbable that one isn’t sure if it’s farce or just delusion.
Young people strike a blow for reasoned discourse
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, May 4, 2009
How refreshing it would be if our political discourse was awash in tempered, reasoned argument instead of frothing snideness. Well, that remarkable world can be found at the annual We the People: The Citizen and The Constitution high school civics competition.
Environmentally conscious and confused
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, April 27, 2009
I’m frozen with indecision over what kind of green technology to invest in that will not become an obsolete dinosaur or object of derision by the time I’m through paying for it.
Fat cats of the not-for-profit world
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, April 20, 2009
What has been bothering me recently, as the economy has soured and more people are in need of charitable services, is the pay of a different sort of CEO. The people who run many of our nonprofits, such as hospitals, educational institutions and social service charities are also being hugely overpaid.
We must confront the torturers who acted in our name
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, April 13, 2009
The Bush administration’s Torture Nation should not be shielded by President Obama’s desire to move forward. Our current president, who used as an applause line during his European tour how we’ve now “prohibited—without exception or equivocation—any use of torture,” has some mopping up to do.
Do these dark times mean a renaissance for labor?
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, April 6, 2009
According to Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO, labor has experienced more growth in the last two years than in a generation, with 400,000 new union members last year alone. And now, with a president and vice president from working families, the signs are good that government will again be on the side of average people.
AIG bonus scandal adds insult to injury of ‘pension dumping’
By ROBYN BLUMNER - Monday, March 30, 2009
Our government wouldn’t let AIG go bankrupt, bolstering it with $182.5 billion in bailout money. That protected those million-dollar retention bonuses. But work-a-day people have not been so lucky.
