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:
End of “America first”: The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin that President Donald Trump’s actions and words on Syria last week are the best evidence yet that in the real world a policy of retrenchment and indifference to suffering is not sustainable.
Arkansas executions: Shane Claiborne the decision by Arkansas — which sits in the middle of the Bible Belt — to begin executing eight men (below) over 10 days, beginning the day after Easter.
Traditionalist millennials: W. Bradford Wilcox and Samuel Sturgeon : Why would millennial men prefer stay-at-home wives? The answer: Race and feminism.
Ken Salazar’s advice: Editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett interviewed Ken Salazar, who recently said he will not run for governor next year. Salazar to fellow Democrats, saying that what could have been remains the party’s strength in trying to climb back into power.
Bennet disappoints on Gorsuch: In our Sunday editorial, we suggested Colorado’s Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, was right to argue against his party’s filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, but we were in his overall approach to the Gorsuch nomination.
On the letters page, Denver Post readers tackled several issues. Here are several of their letters:
Aid in dying: Denver Post columnist Diane Carman her Aunt Margaret, who died last month at the age of 93 and was exceptional in many ways — but in one way, she was like a lot of people, including the 65 percent of Colorado voters who approved of the right to death with dignity.
Trump is tame on trade: Ved Nanda, a Post columnist and director of the Nanda Center for International and Comparative Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, observed that so far, President Trump’s trade policy his campaign rhetoric. In fact, his moves so far seem as conventional as those of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Opposition to Gorsuch: Mario Nicolais — a constitutional scholar and managing partner of KBN Law firm — argued that if you opposed Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court because Donald Trump appointed him, then you are a .
Paid family leave: Kirsten Gillibrand, a U.S. senator from New York, and Faith Winter, a Colorado state representative from Westminster, : If you think American workers should have access to paid leave — just as workers do in every other industrialized country in the world — then raise your voice and speak out about it.
Bears Ears National Monument: Jim Stiles, who publishes The Zephyr magazine in Utah, wrote that national monument status is to protect the Bears Ears area.
Trolling the president: The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote about the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s attempts — via Twitter — to with definitions and the truth.
Dangerous digital addiction: Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop that many Americans are so hooked on the flashing pleasures of smartphone use that they barely register the risks their distraction poses to themselves and others.
Watch and wince: George F. Will, the Washington Post columnist, PBS’s “The Great War,” a six-hour documentary about World War I that begins tonight. (See the series trailer , and watch the series itself on Colorado’s Rocky Mountain PBS, beginning at 8 p.m.)
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 passing of insult comic Don Rickles:
The past week
Here are highlights from last week’s opinion coverage:
Denver Post editorials:
A plan in Syria: Now that the U.S. has engaged in Syria, letap come up with a , approved by Congress and supported by Americans, to stop horrors that we all share responsibility for.
Fossil fuels over environment: Eliminating the Clean Power Plan and making massive cuts to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy shows that the Trump administration is about its friends in the fossil fuel industry than the environment.
Cherry Creek mall’s parking infraction: The Cherry Creek Shopping Center should be cautious with its unpopular experiment, not just because Americans have suburban expectations for their malls, but because online shopping has rendered retail stores increasingly fragile.
No filibuster, no nuclear option: Both parties should in the escalating fight over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. The filibuster has kept the Senate a more deliberative body. Ending it now risks further erosion of checks and balances the nation would miss.
Op-ed columns:
A sordid tale of campaign finance: Megan Schrader, a Denver Post columnist and editorial writer, that Matt Arnold has been demonized for the multitude of campaign finance complaints he files in Colorado’s court, but his most recent drama-filled effort to enforce state campaign laws shows why there’s some value in what he does even if some journalists have chosen not to discuss that side of his work.
Overdue attack on Syria: Denver Post columnist Greg Dobbs, a former foreign correspondent for ABC News, wrote that American bombs over Syria could .
End legacy admissions: Jeffrey J. Selingo wrote that the easiest way for elite universities to bridge the growing economic divide on their campuses and have their student bodies look like the rest of America is to .
Baseball and politics: On the Colorado Rockies’ opening day, Brian Kurz, a teacher and father, had this message for those in Congress who filibuster, obstruct and obfuscate:
Taxation without frustration: John Klotsche, a former senior adviser to the IRS commissioner, why Americans should be responsible for filing tax returns. He argued that the government should handle that task.
Rice in hot water: Washington Post columnist Ed Rogers suggested that questions about Susan Rice, who was President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, suggest that the pursuit of Donald Trump .
Sisyphus would have been a Democrat: Garrison Keillor wrote that once you get past 70, you need to , to keep up your interest in life, for intellectual stimulation. It’s not enough to go to the Y and jump up and down.
Bill O’Reilly settlements: Erik Wemple, who writes about media issues for The Washington Post, wrote that Bill O’Reilly — the Fox News host whose alleged exploits have resulted in $13 million in sexual harassment settlements — is an .
In defense of Devid Nunes: David Harsanyi argued that House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes has from the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
Letters to the editor:
Notable and quotable
“President Donald Trump, who ran a presidential campaign excoriating interventionism, ridiculed the idea of action in Syria, voiced confidence we could leave Bashar Assad in place and reintroduced the noxious 1930s “America First” rhetoric, threw away all that refuse when confronted with the real world.”
Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to sign up yourself, .
Follow us on Twitter:
And on Facebook:
