The weekly newsletter of The Denver Post’s opinion pages.
This is the first edition of The Denver Post’s Sound Off newsletter. Every Monday, we will deliver to your inbox a roundup of what we’ve been publishing on the opinion pages over the past week, including both print and . That includes Denver Post , op-ed by Post columnists like Chuck Plunkett and Megan Schrader as well as nationally syndicated columnists like George F. Will and Garrison Keillor, plus guest commentaries, and editorial .
Perspective
First, a summary of what was in our Sunday Perspective section yesterday:
Fred Hof, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hairi Center for the Middle East, wrote that Syrian “safe zones” are going to require .
Writing for Bloomberg View, Noah Smith argued that President Donald Trump’s immigrant clampdown , where many foreign students attend universities and benefit local economies.
Kevin Simpson, a longtime Denver Post reporter, explains how Trump’s election has over the word “lie.”
Editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett wrote that much has been said about how Trump’s working-class base sees so much in him that the rest of us don’t, adding: “Try as I might, .”
In its Sunday editorial, the Denver Post editorial board argued that the legislature , the state’s health exchange. However, the board said, the state should shut down the tax credit program that is subsidizing the exchange.
On the letters page, Denver Post readers tackled several questions, including:
Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, to a Denver Post , arguing that the state should not — contrary to The Post’s position — eliminate energy impact grants to municipalities and counties.
What does President Trump’s Mexican border wall mean for wildlife? Ben Goldfarb, who writes for Writers on the Range, the wall is bad for El Jefe the Mexican jaguar and other animals.
Denver Post columnist and KHOW radio host Ross Kaminsky said Democrats have pushed him toward (and Tom Brady, too) with their venom and bile since Trump’s inauguration.
Regarding Trump’s travel ban, Diane Carman related the story of an Iraqi family who now live in Lakewood, with a headline that echoes the old Elvis Costello song: “”
In less than a month, wrote new Denver Post columnist Mario Nicolais, President Trump’s damn-the-torpedoes approach to governing has , “presenting the best chance in decades for our country to return to the vision of our Founding Fathers.”
Scott Gessler, Colorado’s former secretary of state, : With his vote on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, will Colorado’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet be a partisan or a statesman?
In one of our most-read opinion pieces of the week, former “Prairie Home Companion” radio host Garrison Keillor that what Mark Twain and other satirists tried to kill is walking around in the form of the president of the United States.
Petula Dvorak wrote that President Trump’s gaffe isn’t the real story about Frederick Douglass — the real story is that Americans only seem to honor Douglass . She argued that “Douglass’ story — born into slavery, self-educated, then a scholar and a revolutionary lauded across the globe — is still the story of today’s America.”
George F. Will, the longtime conservative commentator from The Washington Post, asked: During the Trump presidency, ?
And for those of you who can’t get enough editorial , here are the two we featured on the back page of Sunday’s Perspective section, on the topic of Betsy DeVos becoming secretary of the U.S. Department of Education:
The past week
Here are highlights from last week’s opinion coverage:
Denver Post editorials:
Instead of shutting down the non-profit that runs Connect for Health Colorado — the state’s health exchange — the legislature should that is funding the exchange with $5 million in taxpayer dollars.
An intervention that could have saved a Colorado security officer from an act of religious extremism fell short, but President Donald Trump’s travel ban the tragedy either.
In the public arena, so often the moment matters as much as the message. Officials must balance that reality as they wrangle other, legitimate concerns. In other words: With free speech, the where and the when can be as important as the why.
Itap no secret in Colorado that our state and federal gas taxes aren’t able, by far, to keep up with the demand for new roads and the upkeep of those already in place — and often clogged with traffic. So we hope Coloradans this session to various efforts afoot to fill the gap.
The bashing of a federal judge by , and his attack of news organizations for supposedly sharing a hidden agenda with terrorists, go way too far, and would seem out-there crazy if they weren’t also rather frightening.
Op-ed columns:
Denver Post editorial writer and columnist Megan Schrader wrote that Colorado’s use of a juvenile restraint device called “the wrap” .
, wrote Denver Post columnist Greg Dobbs. Had it been illegal a hundred years ago, the women who rallied for the right to vote might never have won the 19th Amendment.
, wrote David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist and former Denver Post columnist.
What do Milo Yiannopoulos and Elizabeth Warren have in common? Catherine Rampell .
President Trump’s travel moratorium is a , wrote Charles Krauthammer.
The battle against drug addiction, particularly opioids, remains one of the most pressing public health challenges facing communities across the country in 2017, wrote Leroy Garcia, the Colorado Senate’s Assistant Minority Leader who lives in Pueblo. What’s needed is .
Charter schools should receive the as Colorado’s other public schools, wrote former Colorado legislative leaders Terrance D. Carroll and Peter C. Groff.
Former Denver Post reporter Tim Hoover on a bill in the Colorado legislature that would have allowed cyclists to treat stop signs like yields, and red lights like stop signs. (The bill was later killed in committee.) Hoover suggested the measure was a good one, but also urged cyclists to actually follow the rules of the road.
What can the NBA’s Steph Curry and Chris Paul teach us about President Trump’s first few weeks in office? The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza .
Letters to the editor:
Notable and quotable
“If it were up to me … I’d let [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren speak whenever she wants, for as long as she wants, on any stage she demands — ceding my time, if necessary. The more she speaks, the better for conservatives.”
David Harsanyi, Creators Syndicate
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