Utah Senate race exposes ‘moral emptiness of today’s GOP’
The Senate race in Utah has exposed the “moral emptiness” in today’s Republican Party…
“The Lee-McMullin race poses a difficult question: What exactly does the GOP stand for?” Saletan wrote. “Why should voters support a Republican senator against an opponent who agrees with him on policy but not on subverting democracy? If economic, moral, and foreign-policy conservatism no longer define the party, what does? What does it mean to be a Republican in 2022, beyond conspiring — or defending others who have conspired — to overturn elections when your party doesn’t win?”
“McMullin is discovering that there are answers to that question,” he added. “And they’re ugly.”
An article by John Steinbeck about American democracy, written 70 years ago, will be published in English for the first time this week.
The piece, titled How About McCarthyism? was originally published in 1954 in French in Le Figaro Littéraire, although Steinbeck wrote it in English. The piece is being published in English in the Strand Magazine, a US-based print magazine that publishes short fiction, articles and interviews.
The piece, said Andrew Gulli, managing editor, suggests that American democracy has always and will in the future face threats from within, but in the end will emerge stronger.
The title of the article refers to the phenomenon named after US senator Joseph McCarthy, who, during the cold war period, aimed to root out secret communists he thought were present in American institutions, including in government. A number of his accusations were found to be false, and he began to lose popularity in the mid 1950s.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
‘The future the GOP wants for all of America’: New Texas law unleashes deadly mayhem
In one high-profile case earlier this year, Tony Earls “pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an A.T.M. in Houston,” The New York Timesreported Wednesday. “Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her.”
A grand jury declined to indict Earls, agreeing with his lawyer that “everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law.”
As the Times noted, “The shooting was part of what many sheriffs, police leaders, and district attorneys in urban areas of Texas say has been an increase in people carrying weapons and in spur-of-the-moment gunfire in the year since the state began allowing most adults 21 or over to carry a handgun without a license.”
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