Telegram Editorial On State Takeover Of Southbridge Schools

EDITORIAL: A reset in Southbridge – School takeover will help Southbridge turn around its failing schools

It’s not a death sentence, except for the wrong way to run a school system. Think of it as a reset, not just for the Southbridge Public Schools but for the community as a whole.

The Southbridge Public Schools did more than fail its students; it also inadequately prepared students who represent a new generation of Southbridge’s future. This didn’t happen in isolation, however. Southbridge, a town of nearly 17,000 and which has a city form of government, failed its schools. 

End The Gun Epidemic In America

The following Editorial appeared in today’s New York Times. It marked the first time since 1920 that an Editorial has appeared on the paper’s front page. 

End the Gun Epidemic in America

​It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.

*** 

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper. 

The Truth of ‘Black Lives Matter’

The Editorial Board of The New York Times

The Republican Party and its acolytes in the news media are trying to demonize the protest movement that has sprung up in response to the all-too-common police killings of unarmed African-Americans across the country. The intent of the campaign — evident in comments by politicians like Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — is to cast the phrase “Black Lives Matter” as an inflammatory or even hateful anti-white expression that has no legitimate place in a civil rights campaign.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas crystallized this view when he said the other week that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were he alive today, would be “appalled” by the movement’s focus on the skin color of the unarmed people who are disproportionately killed in encounters with the police. This argument betrays a disturbing indifference to or at best a profound ignorance of history in general and of the civil rights movement in particular. From the very beginning, the movement focused unapologetically on bringing an end to state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans and to acts of racial terror very much like the one that took nine lives at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in June. 

New York Times Calls For Torture Prosecution

Ken O’Brien

The New York Times editorial board has called on President Barack Obama and the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into the CIA's use of torture, in a scathing editorial published Sunday.

The board demanded that the investigation look into involvement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as several other former Bush officials, with regards to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report detailing the CIA's post-Sept. 11 torture program. The 500-page report, released in early December, examined the tactics inflicted upon terrorism suspects, whom interrogators waterboarded to the point of near drowning and rectally rehydrated.

Below is the New York Times editorial. What do you think?

An Editorial Comment

Kenneth M. O’Brien

Having posted 100 articles since this site was started, I feel that it is appropriate at this time to address several issues.

The first is the criticisms that have been leveled at me regarding the use of anonymous posts.

As anyone who uses Google’s blogspot service, as I do, knows, there are several options offered to those making a comment.

One option is to choose “Anonymous”. It is beyond my control to change that.

However, there is another option offered. This is the “Name/URL” option. It would greatly simplify matters if more people used this option. When chosen, you can enter a “screen name” for “Name” and then leave the URL option blank. This would at least allow readers to distinguish among different individuals posting comments.