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Women keep politics honest

This is a generalization, I know. As Mark Twain is said to have said, “All generalizations are false, including this one.” But there is growing evidence that women tend to be more protective of our American democracy than men. They are more willing to put their foot down when partisan schemers try to game the electoral system, mostly by changing the rules or gerrymandering. A recent sign that women place more value on being a force for good comes out of conservative Utah. Both parties gerrymander, that is, draw voting district boundaries to give unfair advantage to their ...

We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for

We're now officially in the run-up to the midterm elections, with less than two months to go before Election Day 2026. The good news is most Americans now understand how bad Donald Trump is. With the exception of Richard 0Nixon, he's the most unpopular second-term president at this stage in his tenure in the history of polling going back to the 1940s. On issues where he once was strong — like the economy, national security and immigration — Trump is now underwater, with more Americans opposing than supporting his policies. All the major problems America now faces are entirely ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To Carl Foote of Boardman for embarking on an ambitious and compassionate 700-mile bicycle trek to benefit research to battle the debilitating Alzheimer’s disease. Foote, 74, a veteran benefit bike rider, is in the middle of his excursion across the entire perimeter of Lake Erie in Ohio, Michigan, Canada, New York and Pennsylvania. This isn’t Foote’s first rolling rodeo. In 2024, he biked 2,200 miles across the country on U.S. Route 62 for the same mission. As he put it before launching his Lake Erie project, “Every mile of this ride represents a step forward in the fight ...

Will AI destroy humanity?

In the "Terminator" movie series, the artificial-intelligence system known as Skynet is given control of the nation's nuclear weapons and uses it to try to destroy humanity. One reason that apocalyptic scenarios involving AI are implausible is that, having seen how that particular movie ends, we are unlikely to be foolish enough to give AI custody of the most destructive weapons on the planet. The unthinkable is nonetheless a hot topic of conversation, given that a researcher at Anthropic just resigned and issued a doomsday warning. According to Jacob Coxon, the rush to develop ...

Mother’s milk gone sour

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said Jesse M. Unruh, who in the ‘60s was a powerful Democratic politician and speaker of the California State Assembly. It is a disgrace, if much is disgraceful these days, that we spend so much on getting people elected to Congress, who do little or nothing to solve real problems once they get there. AdImpact, the leading advertising intelligence and market analytics company, estimates more than $3.4 billion will be spent on this year’s midterms across all races. In Texas, alone, an estimated $446 million will be spent by ...

OMA gets its chance to help manufacturers

It is no small feat to reportedly mismanage something so terribly that the federal government steps in and says you’re done. But that’s what happened last year with Ohio’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center, for which the Office of Inspector General says the Ohio Department of Development failed to report accurate financial results and ensure subrecipient expenses were allowable. Now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology says it trusts the Ohio Manufacturer’s Association Educational and Industrial Development Institute to handle the job. OMA says it will ...