Preventive public policy should take into consideration how violent criminals are created. If unresolved grief is at play, there are measures that could affect it better, and maybe limit the bloodshed.
God forbid that I should ever have to stand up and “clearly and unequivocally”denounce everyone I’ve ever been close to who has expressed views that are less than politically correct.
Both men proclaim a reverence to God. Both avow that faith is their guiding principle. Pope Benedict XVI in his actions seems to bear that out. As for George W. Bush, I’m beginning to have my doubts.
Deaths such as that of Lori Reynolds — the Kansas City, Kan., bartender who was shot six times because she refused to serve a man a drink — have to be taken into account as much as the right responsible people have to own guns.
I’m surrounded by the type of small Midwestern towns Barack Obama so carelessly labeled as full of “bitter” folk. My mother is from such a town, smack in the middle of Kansas.
There isn’t much of a national consensus on the benefits of free trade. True, machinists and textile workers dislike it, while farmers love it (at least for now). But most Americans don’t know what to make of it.
Certain commentary morphs to near mantra when the topic is the Kansas City School District. Among the most often repeated: “Why can’t the Kansas City, Missouri, School District be more like the Kansas City, Kansas, School District?”
The words came out of her young mouth as biting, harsh truths. American-born kids, the ones who are legally here, they waste it, the teenager told me. They do drugs, they drink, they don’t study. They join gangs or simply think the gang life is hip.
I have a dream. A dream that, one day, this nation’s veneration of Martin Luther King Jr. will not be limited to the platitudes that get wheeled out every year to mark his birthday or Black History Month.
It’s time for the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and others like him to get a clue that there are better ways to deliver their messages — which, I have no doubt, can be messages of hope to people who don’t have much.
Before rolling your eyes at the thought of yet another group convening to discuss Kansas City's schools, this one might be different. The Council of the Great City Schools is at the right starting point: the disconnect between the area’s residents and the children in the district.
If Barack Obama succeeds in winning the Democratic presidential nomination, the Latino vote will be critical to him in the general election. He’s going to need to court and closely guard it.
“I would reject and denounce.” With that utterance, Barack Obama deftly beat back yet another round of guilt by association, a game that continues to chase his campaign. In his televised debate with Hillary Clinton in Cleveland, Obama was baited by both his opponent and moderator Tim Russert to repudiate Minister Louis Farrakhan, the black separatist leader of the Nation of Islam, who recently opined that he liked the idea of a black man in the White House.
This is the story of Zember, also known as Mu Lo. She is a young woman who lives outside a Thailand refugee camp, a place like a human zoo. Zember, one of those on display, is protesting for her freedom.
Now is the time for Latinos to leverage the clout of their vote. Simplistic “Si se puede” (“Yes we can”) platitudes aren’t going to cut it. Latino voters care about the same issues that resonate with other citizens.
Earlier this month, two suicide bombings held the headlines on two accounts: the numbers of dead and those who unwittingly carried the bombs to the targets.
OK, America, here’s the deal: Federal agents are conducting predawn raids, without warrants, to round up immigrants, but you don’t need to know the details. Apparently, you don’t care enough about the issue.
Consider the varying ways the term “leader” is applied: self-anointed, elected and those who come by their stature through hiring or promotion.
The question isn’t so much, Is America ready for a black president? Rather, the more pertinent query the candidacy of Barack Obama poses is this: Is America ready for a president who could lay bare the country’s mixed up, outdated concepts of race?
The outrage is unrelenting and understandable — but at this point unnecessary. In October 2006, a 13-year-old St. Louis area girl hanged herself in her bedroom closet after her heart was broken by an online crush.
The promise of “change” as an emerging catchphrase for the presidential campaign poses an interesting dilemma for Hillary Clinton.
If addressing stereotypes makes you skittish, the story of Zen may not be for you. Zen is the creation of two businessmen — one black, one white — who faced some harsh attitudes about black people to produce what most said would never work in Kansas City — an upscale hip-hop club.
Martyrdom has a way of conferring on the dead the crowning glory they never could achieve in life. This is tragically the case in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Before Kansas City had Secret Santa, it had Virginia Putsch. Granted, hers was not the sort of mystery gift-giving of a sly elf seeking needy strangers. The employees of the Putschs’ restaurants knew that each Christmas their families would be treated to a special day. In fact, they counted on it.
Apparently, presidential campaigning is a little like drinking alcohol. Too much, too quickly, brings out the worst in people.
We can’t feign shock anymore. But I doubt the deadly shootings at the Westroads in Omaha, Neb., will move us to do something about mass, unwarranted violence. At best, it has sent us all the message that, oh, it can happen at the mall, too.
Anyone who has ever uttered an apology knows the power of these three words: “I am sorry.”
Step aside soccer moms, NASCAR dads. A new sought-after voting bloc is emerging in American politics: People like me — unmarried women voters.
The vigil for a new day in Cuba has for some time been focused in the wrong direction. All eyes are on Fidel Castro, as the world waits for him to die.
