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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Opinion >  Syndicated columns

George F. Will: The elevating, at times appalling, path to America’s founding

Saturday marks the 250th anniversary of the first day of the 3,059-day war that birthed the modern world. Commemorating the April 19, 1775, skirmishes at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge begins a celebration that will culminate July 4, 2026. These almost 15 months will inflame the perpetual scolds who, examining this nation’s history with a disapproving squint, see little to celebrate.

Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Politicians promise families tax cuts. Inflation keeps undoing them.

A “growing bipartisan consensus” holds that government policy needs to be easier on families, according to the New York Times. One Republican official told the New Yorker that his party is making “the family turn” in economics. Last year’s presidential race saw “each party trying to one-up the other on its family friendliness,” concluded CNN.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

F.D. Flam: We used to disagree. Now we don’t talk to each other

Since the COVID pandemic began five years ago, the U.S. has gone from being merely polarized to split into two separate and incompatible realities. Worse, according to a recently released survey, we lack a “common understanding of facts.” So much for the new normal. Your reality depends on whether you identify with the political right or left. In its study, Bright Line Watch asked political ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Bret Stephens: Free Gaza from its own tyrants first

The world should remember the name of Odai Al-Rubai. The 22-year-old Palestinian man joined protests in the Gaza Strip last week to demand an end to 18 years of Hamas’ violent misrule in the territory. Demonstrators could be heard shouting, “Out, out, Hamas get out,” and “Hamas are terrorists,” while displaying banners saying “Hamas does not represent us.” In retaliation, Al-Rubai’s family says, he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by members of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades. Then his body was dumped in front of the family home.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Trudy Rubin: Signalgate leak reveals a worse intelligence disaster than most Americans realize

You think the Signalgate debacle is a national security disaster? You may not realize the half of it. This Pentagon blunder (don’t call it a mistake) lays bare the security risks posed by President Donald Trump’s unqualified and ill-prepared national security team. The incompetence on display is the real scandal — one which goes deeper than the astonishing decision by Defense Secretary Pete ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Andreas Kluth: Obsessed with Greenland? You too may have the wrong map

At some point in his life, Donald Trump looked at a world map and saw something he wants – something that, as president of the US, he now says he will take “one way or the other.” It’s Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, one of America’s closest allies. “I love maps,” Trump once explained. “And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’ ”
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Commentary: Under Trump, the Voice of America has fallen silent. US enemies are cheering

Almost 30 years ago, toward the end of President Bill Clinton’s first term in office, Republicans in Congress forced a government shutdown that led some 800,000 nonessential federal workers to be furloughed. At the time, I was the director of the Voice of America, and VOA was broadcasting in more than 45 languages reaching more than 200 million regular listeners around the world. We ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Bret Stephens: Democracy dies in dumbness

It used to be common knowledge – not just among policymakers and economists but also high school students with a grasp of history – that tariffs are a terrible idea. The phrase “beggar thy neighbor” meant something to regular people, as did the names of Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. Willis Hawley. Americans broadly understood how much their 1930 tariff, along with other protectionist and isolationist measures, did to turn a global economic crisis into another world war. Thirteen successive presidents all but vowed never to repeat those mistakes.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Commentary: Did we learn or not? Why there can be no going back on COVID lessons

Five years ago this month, COVID-19 changed the world. The first pandemic in a century altered how Americans saw themselves, each other, work, health care, relationships, government, mortality, and media. It tangled everyone across the globe in webs of fear, conflict, grief, disbelief, estrangement, and gratitude. It prompted a parallel pandemic of disinformation that has only deepened in the ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Conor Sen: These unpopular mortgages may be the key to affordable housing

Can a mortgage product tainted by the financial crisis come back to revive U.S. housing? The answer could reorient the housing market and give the Federal Reserve greater control over consumer spending in the years ahead. A lack of affordability has hindered housing transactions the past two years, frustrating would-be buyers and, more recently, hammering the stocks of developers. Those ...