Political Op-Eds

It looks like President Obama will not be sitting quietly during his final year in office. He began 2016 with a detailed plan to use executive power to place tighter restrictions on guns sales, which he defended against critics in a town hall on CNN.

It's times like this that I wish President Obama were the black militant socialist the right is convinced he is: some combination of young Malcolm X and an even older Bernie Sanders. (I am thinking about the kind of Bernie Sanders we would see if he doesn't become president and totally gives up on the system.)

We have entered the season of unsatisfying political rituals.

The state of the union sucks.

Fellow members of the reviled GOP Washington establishment: Want to hear something scary? Here is something I think I've learned over the years, validated by a boatload of political campaigns.

Providing opportunities for our kids, supporting our veterans, and conserving our public lands and resources are among the nation's most pressing challenges.

Maine is a state that seems remote, even to those of us who live in northern New England. Mainers have their own ways, a hardiness and independence of spirit that are admirable. Its thick and steep woods attracted, among others, Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in "The Maine Woods" (1864): "Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there."

Many of us taking part in the CNN town hall on guns have been touched by someone who chose to do evil.

When the recession started in 2008 and the economy was tanking in California and across the country, I was serving as a board member on my local teacher's union board. Facing a budget shortfall, the district determined that it had to lay off several teachers. Because of California's union-negotiated school district rules, the most recent teachers to be hired are the first to be fired when layoffs are needed.

The big divide in the room Thursday night was not just about guns.

Try again, Donald.

With less than a month until the Iowa caucuses, followed immediately by New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary, it's time the conservative base and Republican establishment destroy Donald J. Trump -- before it's too late for the party, the conservative cause, and the nation.

President Obama revealed, with his body language, tone and answers at CNN's "Guns in America" town hall just how much he doesn't connect with the millions of law-abiding gun owners in this country. Nor does he seem to connect to the importance of the fundamental gun rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

On Thursday night, Anderson Cooper will host a town hall meeting with President Barack Obama about "Guns in America." This is part of Obama's sincere and heartfelt effort to reduce gun violence through executive actions, which he announced on Tuesday.

"Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton released the most detailed policy document on autism in U.S. presidential election history.

No, President Obama is not enlisting the nation's doctors as his henchmen in a plan to deprive the American people of their guns. But misinformation to the contrary is spreading rapidly across social media and conservative websites.

The killing of Syria is being photographed, tweeted and posted on Facebook. Perhaps you saw the latest images from the town of Madaya, which is being slowly, deliberately, strangled by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with the help of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia.

The bad news is North Korea just tested another nuclear weapon, in flagrant violation of the global norm against such tests observed by all other nations since 1998.