Columns

Syndicated Columnist

You may have missed the starting shot, but the midterm races officially began last week with the Texas primaries. This coming Tuesday, voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District head to the polls for a special election to fill the seat left vacant by Republican Tim Murphy.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic — or downright giddy — 2018 promises to be as significant, if not more so given the stakes, as 2010 when Republicans wrested the House of Representatives from Democrats amid tea party turbulence and early chants of “repeal and replace.”

Syndicated Columnist

It was Donald Trump’s position on guns that did it. To be more specific, it was President Trump’s proposal to address violence in schools by arming schoolteachers that finally made a Democrat of my son. Until then, he’d been holding out hope for the Republican Party. But when the president decided that my son’s girlfriend — a student teacher dedicated to teaching science to inner-city public school students — should earn a bonus for carrying a deadly weapon, my son decided he’d had it.

Syndicated Columnist

As computers continue to replace cashiers, ticket vendors and bank tellers, consumers increasingly don’t notice or care much whether they are dealing with a human or a machine. The big exception is when they do.

Consumers often prefer the convenience of interacting with computers. A checkout employee who doesn’t know the price of Gala apples adds grit to the smooth functioning of an over-scheduled day.

At least they’re doing- something, which is about the most one can say about Florida’s proposed gun bill.

But doing something and doing something effective are very different animals.

State legislators under pressure to “do something” following the murders of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, cobbled together a bill that likely wouldn’t do much good.

Though hearts are in the right place, minds are still limited by politics and hobbled by haste. Democrats want more; Republicans want less.