How bad do things have to get in what we used to call The Community of Monroe? Do only half a dozen county legislators have the guts to do the right thing? Next week, the Lej will vote on Jack Doyle’s proposed budget. That budget will ramp up the cuts we’ve already begun to […]
Columns
Posted inNews & Opinion
Our fear of aliens
President George Bush’s sweeping order to screen thousands of Middle Easterners suspected of espionage and other crimes is not the first time this country has been gripped by anti-alien fever. (The Nisei who were interned during World War 11 were different. These were largely American-born or naturalized citizens who remained in this country.) […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Documented arrogance
On July 18, 1870 — the day before France declared war on Prussia — the First Vatican Council met for a vote on papal “primacy” and infallibility. There were “533 Fathers on hand, and all but two voted placet [yes],” writes Father Robert F. McNamara in his history of the Rochester diocese. Rochester Bishop Bernard […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
A model for metro
When I moved here in the 1960s, Rochester was a community of promise, with a bustling downtown and great plans for the future. It felt more vibrant, more big-city than the two Southern cities I knew best, my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Nashville, near which my husband grew up. That’s no longer the […]
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Endorsements
Given the mess that is New York’s state government, voters might wonder whether there’s any point in voting in state races on November 5. A representative democracy this is not. Republicans have a stronghold on the Senate, the Democrats on the Assembly, and leaders of both are not only content to keep things that […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Urban journal
The time for protest is just beginning Numerous Democrats — including our own two senators — disgraced themselves last week by caving in on Iraq. With their help, the president has the authority to start his war any time he likes. In the week before the vote, an anti-war protest in downtown Rochester drew […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The body politic
I paid $50 to think about my vagina for two hours a couple of weeks ago. This is more time than most women spend in their lives thinking about it, according to The Vagina Monologues, so I guess it was money well spent. The evening was like a hilarious graduate seminar run by three […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Not it!
As county legislators debate the 2003 budget proposed by County Executive Jack Doyle this month, there’ll be a lot of discussion about how the cuts Doyle’s proposed could hurt various groups of people: abused children, the poor, the disabled, the homeless. But when it comes to discussing a property tax increase to restore some of […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
In one pocket, out the other
New York State Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian is stumped. I’ve called him to get his take on the legality of over $1 million in loans Tom Golisano’s campaign committee gave to the committees of his two candidates for lieutenant governor, Dan Mahony and William Neild, and Daghlian is just as clueless as […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The US as uni-bomber
“I am scared,” said a friend, discussing Iraq. So am I. And sick at heart. Under the cloak of fighting terrorism and Saddam Hussein, George Bush is making a catastrophic — perhaps irreversible — change in US foreign policy. That change will affect not only the United States but also countries and innocent people […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Wilmot’s tiny white flag
If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it? Likewise, if a member of the Democratic minority in the County Legislature submits a resolution, does anybody read it? Answers: yes, lumberjacks and hikers; no, not really. A recent legislative referral submitted by Assistant Minority Leader Christopher Wilmot is a case in […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
This great wound
The headline is a phrase I’ve borrowed from journalist Pete Hamill. On a recent Lehrer NewsHour, Hamill used it in referring to last September’s attack on New York City. And it’s the most apt description I’ve seen. I have sought, over the past few weeks, some insight into the subject of emotional pain: not […]
