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Voters have choice between incumbent or fresh face

National Columnists

Politics is the only profession of which I am aware in which competence doesn't seem to matter. One can fail miserably; one can be corrupt and one can get away with crimes that if committed by someone outside of elective office, arrest, prosecution and a stint in jail would be the result. Yet politicians, Democrats and Republicans, continue to get re-elected. Which brings me to Tuesday's race for mayor in Los Angeles. The incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, wants another term in office, though her tenure has defined failure. Number one on the list, which her opponent, reality show performer ...

Candidate changes his views for campaign

National Columnists

James Talarico has decided that God isn't nonbinary after all. Anyone who has relied on the Texas senatorial candidate for theological guidance might be experiencing whiplash. Talarico is trying to clean up a series of statements, including about God's supposed nonconforming gender, that are vulnerabilities ahead of a competitive race against Republican candidate, Ken Paxton. Once upon a time, Talarico, a former Presbyterian seminarian, wanted to make the Bible into a tool of radical gender ideology. It was during a 2021 debate in the Texas legislature on whether biological men ...

How to help boys

National Columnists

It would be better for boys if society stopped expecting them to act like girls. A Texas mom recently shared a video of her son at his kindergarten graduation. The clip shows him squirming in his chair, playing with his hands and stretching over his seat. She captioned the video, "You're six and the ceremony enters minute 37." The footage went viral because the boy is cute and the situation is so relatable for parents. But for boys, moments like this are no laughing matter. Think about most modern early elementary classrooms. Many teachers want students to spend hours a ...

Dems need to get unified, get to work

National Columnists

It seemed to take forever, but the Democratic National Committee recently released their autopsy of their ill-fated 2024 presidential campaign. It's bitter medicine, my Dem friends, but, as Momma used to say, take a spoonful, it'll do you good. As midterm elections loom, and as the party girds its loins for what will be a millennial battle to retake the White House, Democrats would do well to recall the great humorist Will Rogers' assessment of their 1924 convention, which is widely remembered as the longest and "wildest" in the nation's history. Although the Democrats that year ...

Artificial intelligence: A modern tower of Babel?

National Columnists

On May 25, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence." This pastoral letter has been much anticipated by the Catholic Church, and immediate news headlines expressed intrigue that the pope addressed the moral dilemma of AI and compared it to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. He also discussed Nehemiah, the cupbearer to Persian King Artaxerxes I during the 5th century B.C. In a detailed breakdown of the pope's central points in "Magnifica Humanitas," Our ...

Forget the rainbow, let's taste the vinegar

National Columnists

My mind wanders, and sometimes I just follow behind it, seeing where it goes. Driving to the gym recently, I debated bringing in my water bottle before remembering there was a water fountain inside. I started thinking about the person who designed the fountain itself, about the ...