The weekly newsletter of The Denver Post’s opinion pages.
This is The Denver Post’s Sound Off newsletter. Every Monday, we 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:
Our feature article this week was by Christopher Hill, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state and the dean of the Korbel School of International studies at DU. Discussing the Trump presidency, Hill wondered: Having already come under siege in many of its outposts around the world, , too?
On that same theme, DU law professor Ved Nanda reported on a recent trip to India, where he gave a talk on human rights to judges, lawyers and students. Afterward, those in attendance all wanted to know: , especially concerning the Indian IT industry and Indian students attending American university?
In light of last week’s brutal c of Colorado’s youth correction system, state Rep. Pete Lee, who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee, argued that Colorado must immediately adopt Missouri’s system. Lee recently traveled to the Show Me State to see that state’s system first-hand, and reported that .
Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle wrote that Americans of a certain social class love nothing more than an “authentic” food experience — yet it turns out that , and a highly overrated one.
In our Sunday editorial, the editorial board weighed in on Denver Post investigative reporter David Migoya’s on a gubernatorial appointee who chairs the Colorado Developmental Disabilities Council filing dozens of lawsuits against small businesses over the past two months claiming they violate federal disability laws. The board argued that these with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Denver Post columnist Steve Lipsher, who lives in Silverthorne, urged the legislature to pass a bill that would prohibit the “excessive exhibition of smoke” by drivers. Specifically, Lipsher wants the law to those who alter their fuel and exhaust systems to churn out huge plumes of dark smoke.
In our most popular opinion article of the last week, Air Force Academy psychology professor Craig A. Foster wrote that NBA star reveal the danger of science denial.
Vincent Carroll, the former Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News editorial page editor, wrote that once again, a loose cannon on the board of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission is .
David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist and a former Denver Post columnist, turned his attention to baseball this week. (After all, opening day is less than a month away.) Responding to for major league players to become more politically active, Harsanyi asked: “What makes 2017 so special? Well, there’s a Republican in the White House, of course, which means the world is on the brink of calamity.” His conclusion: Please .
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson disagreed with the idea that President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress was “presidential.” The only way it was presidential, Robinson, suggested, was if he was being graded on an .
George F. Will has been reading a lot lately. Several weeks ago, he wrote about Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III’s recent memoir about the 1960s. This week, he praised a novel by Lionel Shriver that imagines America merely by continuing current practices.
Former Colorado legislator Claire Levy, a Democrat from Boulder, of running into a man who had just been released from prison and was navigating rejoining society on his own after 25 years of incarceration. Levy pointed out that, for those who are simply released, not paroled, from Colorado prisons, there is no support for them as they try to begin productive lives on the outside.
Javier Rodriguez, chief executive of DaVita Kidney Care, wrote that a number of insurance companies are against patients who receive charitable premium assistance.
On the letters page, Denver Post readers tackled several issues. Here are several of their letters:
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 Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday:
The past week
Here are highlights from last week’s opinion coverage:
Denver Post editorials:
The more we get to know about new national security adviser H.R. McMaster, the more he impresses. President Donald Trump should that he drop his gleeful insistence in describing jihadists as “radical Islamic terrorists.”
Though we support Colorado Senate Bill 40, which would update the Colorado Open Records Act by requiring to governments release documents and data in the usable digital formats in which the information already exists, we a series of amendments to the bill that would create dangerous exemptions to CORA.
We couldn’t agree more with President Donald Trump that “ as long as there is compromise on both sides.” But we wish he had spoken those words in his address to Congress, rather than just in a meeting with media earlier in the day. And we think meaningful immigration reform can be quickly implemented by Congress to alleviate the fear millions are living in.
With little fanfare, a bill slipped through Colorado’s Republican-led Senate last year and became law, allowing women across the state to go to a pharmacist and receive hormone-based birth-control pills without a prescription from a doctor. that this issue wasn’t hijacked for political purposes. The end result was Republicans and Democrats achieving a good thing for Colorado.
More than 1,500 people showed up at a town hall meeting for (not with) Sen. Cory Gardner, who was invited but didn’t show up. He was represented instead by a cardboard cutout. It’d be easier to defend Colorado’s first-term Republican senator if he’d braved the crowds at least once during the congressional recess — but we do think .
Op-ed columns:
Veteran journalist Greg Dobbs lamented that despite the fact that over his career, he put his life on the line a number of times to report the news, he’s still by President Donald Trump.
Democratic State Sen. Rhonda Fields, who helped pass gun-control legislation in 2013, argued that congressional Republicans are by not facing their angry constituents.
Charles Krauthammer wrote that Congress has allowed itself to become an increasingly subordinate branch — but into the vacuum has stepped the states, with attorneys general of being a check on executive power.
A number of columnists weighed in on President Donald Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday evening. Among them:
- E.J. Dionne wrote that Trump delivered .
- Ed Rogers wrote that Trump delivered a to Congress.
- Jonathan Bernstein wrote that Trump , but his speech lacked substance.
- And Alexandra Petri exclaimed: President Trump during his address to Congress!
Garrison Keillor wrote that everybody used to have an old uncle like Donald Trump, and the president is simply that old uncle .
Mario Nicolais, a constitutional scholar and Denver Post columnist wrote: Outrage at President Donald Trump, his spokespeople and his administration for employing “alternative facts” has become an all-consuming pastime for a very vocal segment of the population. And yet .
Donald Trump’s round-up of undocumented immigrants is cruel and racist in its execution, wrote Froma Harrop. But that doesn’t give Democrats a free pass to fudge on the issue of illegal immigration. Democrats need on the issue — they need to say, “We support a generous immigration program, but people without the proper papers cannot come here and take jobs.”
Michèle Flournoy, who was an undersecretary of defense from 2009 to 2012, wrote that President Donald Trump is right to spend more on defense and suggested .
Letters to the editor:
Notable and quotable
“There’s a reason that after two and a half centuries the French are on their Fifth Republic and we are still on our first.”
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist
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