Nancy Pelosi Tag

“The Joe Biden Thing” hit full force after my last week’s blog had posted—but waiting is not necessarily bad in such circumstances. It offered an opportunity to cool down from volcanic levels, try to think calmly, read and listen to different opinions, and do some research of my own. Here goes. —Women (and some smart men) are expressing frustration that accusations against Biden are being examined in greater detail and intensity than Donald Trump's far more numerous, even self-admitted sexual assaults; I heartily agree. Trump hasn't been asked about these (at least 25) attacks in many months, possibly years. How about the press returning to those stories, in detail? —Hopefully, others were as irritated as I was by the shock of pundits who gasped that Senators Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and former Georgia State Senator Stacey Abrams all vouched for Biden as being a...

"Fetal assault. Chemical endangerment of a fetus. Manslaughter. Second-degree murder. Feticide. Child abuse. Reckless injury to a child. Concealing a birth. Concealing a death. Neglect of a minor. Reckless homicide. Attempted procurement of a miscarriage." These are charges being brought against some women for seeking or having had an abortion in some states in America today. The above list is a direct quote from the New York Times Special Section: Report on a Woman’s Right, dated January 20 of this year. The Times added, "More and more laws are treating the fetus as a person and the woman as less of one as states charge pregnant women with crimes." I’m glad and grateful that their editorial board actually gets it. In fact, if we are not both vigilant and active, we will be back at square one with women dying by the thousands every year in back-alley butchered abortions. Furthermore,...

For the first time in the history of the Republic, a Speaker of the United States House of Representatives barred a President of the United States from entering the House.  In 1986, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill refused to let President Reagan address the House before it voted on an aid package for the Contras, right-wing Nicaraguan rebels for whom Reagan hoped to persuade Congress to appropriate $100 million.  O’Neil offered a joint session with the Senate instead, but Reagan turned it down because he wanted to focus on the purse strings of the House. That’s the only time anything has happened remotely like what we’ve just witnessed. It’s worth repeating: For the first time in the history of the Republic, a Speaker of the United States House of Representatives barred a President of the United States from entering the House. This is completely within the rights of the Speaker’s power, since the...

Susan Zerinsky, age 66 and 5’1” tall, has just become the first woman to head the legendary CBS News division. Yes, that CBS News, as in Murrow and Cronkite, which once set the gold standard for broadcast journalism, of late severely tarnished by #MeToo scandals necessitating the firings of Charlie Rose and Les Moonves. Zerinsky came to CBS at age 20, worked her way up, has produced “48 Hours” for years, exercises seven days a week, boxes, lift weights, does Pilates, and has taken SLT classes because she heard they might make her taller. Of the sexual misconduct at CBS, she vigilantly declares, “#MeToo isn’t behind us, it’s part of us.” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is working from home since being released from the hospital after surgery for two malignant nodules on her left lung. She’s 85 and this was her third bout with cancer. She expects to be back on...

This week I want to focus on a small story that got insufficient coverage in the Trump glut of news, since it merely is about two of the most important founding principals of our Republic: freedom of speech and freedom of religion. You may have heard that on April 16, Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan announced that Fr. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest and the House chaplain since 2011, would be stepping down. A day later, it turned out that Conroy was not leaving voluntarily but that the Speaker's chief of staff had told him to resign or be fired. Conroy duly tendered his letter of resignation, to take effect on May 24. But then in strode Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader and former Speaker herself, to Conroy's defense. Pelosi takes her Catholicism as seriously as her politics—yet she once endured a six-year estrangement from her mother, with...