Myrtle Beach, SC A real investigation can surprise its authors. This one is being built so that surprise would be a malfunction. That is the problem I keep coming back to, and it starts earlier than most of the coverage admits. Before there was a select committee there was a bill for an independent commission … Continue reading Should the House January 6 select committee have been constituted as a genuine bipartisan investigative body with minority subpoena rights, or does its design make a predetermined narrative inevitable?
Politics
After the Senate acquitted Trump in the February 2021 impeachment trial, did a second impeachment of a former president establish a useful constitutional check, or a precedent that future Congresses will use as a political tail on a lost election?
Gastonia, NC A useful constitutional check has to work when the other tribe holds the House. A tail on a lost election only has to work once. That is where I start, and it is worth being precise about what actually happened, because the shorthand everybody is using is wrong in a way that matters. … Continue reading After the Senate acquitted Trump in the February 2021 impeachment trial, did a second impeachment of a former president establish a useful constitutional check, or a precedent that future Congresses will use as a political tail on a lost election?
Did the closure of houses of worship raise constitutional questions the courts have handled well, or has judicial deference to emergency public-health authority gone further than it should?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — I taught music for years, so let me say the uncomfortable thing first, because nobody at these tables who isn't a musician is going to. The singing evidence is real. In March a choir rehearsed in Washington state — sixty-one people, one infected, and fifty-three of them caught it and two … Continue reading Did the closure of houses of worship raise constitutional questions the courts have handled well, or has judicial deference to emergency public-health authority gone further than it should?
Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Minnesota is the state with the most direct stake in this and most people here know it. In 2010 we kept our eighth congressional seat by fewer than nine thousand people. That was the last seat apportioned in the entire country. Had the count gone slightly differently, it would have gone … Continue reading Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Bismarck, North Dakota Correspondent — I'd say we won't know for some time, and that not knowing is itself the problem. The count was suspended in the spring, the schedule was compressed, the end date moved more than once and finally landed in mid-October after the Supreme Court allowed the shortened deadline. Then last month … Continue reading Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Has the rapid expansion of telemedicine been a durable improvement in access, or a temporary accommodation that will be rolled back once the emergency ends?
Knoxville, Tennessee Correspondent — Improvement, and I say that as somebody who is usually the person in the room complaining that a new system won't work in a rural county. Our situation before March was that a patient in one of the outlying counties drove ninety minutes to see a specialist for a fifteen-minute appointment. … Continue reading Has the rapid expansion of telemedicine been a durable improvement in access, or a temporary accommodation that will be rolled back once the emergency ends?
Should public-health officers answer directly to elected officials, or be insulated from them?
Dayton, Ohio Correspondent — Ohio is the case study and I'd rather talk about it than about the principle. Our state health director resigned in June. There had been protests at her house, armed ones, and a run of legislative bills aimed at stripping the authority of her office. She was the most visible public … Continue reading Should public-health officers answer directly to elected officials, or be insulated from them?
Should public-health officers answer directly to elected officials, or be insulated from them?
Bismarck, North Dakota Correspondent — I'd start with what actually happened rather than with the principle, because the principle sounds fine in either direction. Health officers across the country have resigned, retired, or been removed since April — the count is somewhere near fifty by the reporting I've seen. Some of them left after threats … Continue reading Should public-health officers answer directly to elected officials, or be insulated from them?
Do the Abrams-Kemp aftermath in Georgia and the restrictive abortion laws passed in Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri signal that state legislatures are now the main arena of American political conflict?
Gastonia, North Carolina Correspondent On the morning of September 11 the North Carolina House took a vote to override the governor's budget veto while most of the Democratic members were at a memorial service, having been told, by their account, that no votes would be held that morning, and the override passed fifty-five to nine … Continue reading Do the Abrams-Kemp aftermath in Georgia and the restrictive abortion laws passed in Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri signal that state legislatures are now the main arena of American political conflict?
What are the strategic consequences of the U.S. decision to reduce its presence in northeastern Syria and the subsequent Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces?
Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent My son is in the National Guard, and the Wyoming Guard has sent people to the Middle East on every rotation since 2003, so I will say at the start that I have wanted American soldiers out of Syria for as long as they have been there, that I was glad when … Continue reading What are the strategic consequences of the U.S. decision to reduce its presence in northeastern Syria and the subsequent Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces?
