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Don’t fear Flock cameras

Editorials

We have met the enemy — and it is watching us. There’s a growing backlash against Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers that have become ubiquitous across the country. The cameras take images of license plates, which are then stored in a searchable database that police departments can query in the course of investigations. Opponents of the cameras consider them an instrument of Big Brother, who’s not only watching, but constantly recording and tracking. Vandals have disabled and stolen the cameras and shot them. There’s a movement to get jurisdictions to ...

Who is Natalie Harp? Americans need to know

Editorials

It’s summertime, and the living is uneasy, particularly in Washington newsrooms and bureaus. At this time of year, historically, serious news can be harder to find than the newspeople available to cover it. The result is what journalists call “the silly season,” when you can never guess what pseudo-story will get elevated to the headlines. Searching for silly news in seriously serious Washington can be easier than you might think, and of late it is becoming difficult to draw the line between the consequential and the absurd. Consider the kerfuffle raised around a remark by ...

DEAR ANNIE: Love runs deep in the shared little moments

Editorials

DEAR ANNIE: In response to all the working mothers who are weighed down by guilt, I’d like to share my experience. I am 75 years old, and when I was growing up, my mother worked from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. I usually came home from school around 3:30 or 4, and my memories of that time are nothing but warm. Before leaving for work, my mother made dinner for my father to heat up later. She ate her own dinner at 4, and I would sit at the table with her and tell her about my day. She always gave me one bite from her plate while we talked, and somehow that small ritual has stayed with me ...

Old nuclear order dead; What next?

Editorials

The world is sleepwalking into a new nuclear arms race. As arms-control treaties hashed out over decades lapse, countries that formerly rejected possessing nuclear weapons are starting to reconsider. The Doomsday Clock is set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to the symbolic hour of the apocalypse. The United States and Russia, which control 86% of the world’s nuclear arsenal, are without an arms-limitation treaty for the first time since 1972. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 and extended under President Joe ...

Thirst for fame can prove deadly

Editorials

The tragic deaths of Hayden Panettiere and Jason Arday can be tied to the same phenomenon. It’s not new but has accelerated in today’s influencer culture: youth’s hunger for fame. Panettiere was an accomplished actress who, buried in depression and addiction, died from an apparent drug overdose at 36. Arday was a serial fabulist who talked his way into becoming the youngest black professor at Cambridge University. When his fabrications came crashing down around him, he took his own life. “Fame is the thirst of youth,” the poet Byron wrote over two centuries ago. He asked ...

Ohio schools have new way to tackle chronic absenteeism

Editorials

“Every minute counts,” Heather Dodd, director of pupil services for Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools, told WKYC-TV at the start of the school year. “If your child’s late to school, those minutes count. If they have a doctor’s appointment, those minutes count. They all count towards chronic absenteeism.” Surprised? Ohio law changed this year, and parents will have to be aware that not only are schools keeping a much closer eye on chronic absenteeism (and doing a better job communicating with parents on the matter), but they are also tracking it in hours — not just days. ...