Volume 265 | No. 13

The GOP’s Shameful War on Voters

by

After looking into one of their main issues, I have to agree with Republicans: Our elections are being rigged. Anyone who takes an honest look can see that the electoral process is being stolen in broad daylight. By Republican lawmakers. In state after state, GOP governors and legislators are on a rampage to rig the system so you can’t vote. By “you,” I mean you African-Americans, Latinx voters, Asian-Americans, Indigenous Peoples, and practically all other non-white citizens. Also, you seniors, union members, poor people, students, immigrant families, and others with a tendency to vote for Democrats. Fraudulently shouting “fraud!” GOP officials insist that they must …

Read more

Nine Decades of Progress

by

by James A. Haught I’ll be 90 on my next birthday. My long life is sinking, shrinking, slip-sliding away. My wife is worse: bedfast, under Hospice care. Soon, our world will end, not with a bang but a whimper. Looking back over nine decades, I’m proud and pleased because secular humanism—the progressive struggle to make life better for everyone—won hundreds of victories during my time. When I came of age in the 1950s, fundamentalist taboos ruled America. Gay sex was a felony, and homosexuals hid in the closet. It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. It was illegal to look at …

Read more

Gerrymandering: Enemy of Democracy

by

To the Editor: Each state goes through the process of redistricting every ten years, based on the census data. This process is supposed to ensure that every citizen is properly represented, regardless of political party, but politicians play with boundary lines to try to win state and federal elections. The New Hampshire Republican Party, which currently has a small majority in Concord, has been outright shameful about it this year. WMUR quoted GOP State Chair Steve Stepanek openly bragging, “…we control redistricting,” he said. “I can stand here today and guarantee you that we will send a conservative Republican to Washington, D.C. as a Congress …

Read more

Flotsam & Jetsam

by

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” – James D. Nicoll –=≈=– “The Natives of New England are accustomed to build them houses, much like the wild Irish, they gather Poles in the woodes and put the great end of them in the ground, placinge them in forme of a circle or circumference, and bendinge the topps of them in forme of an Arch, they bind …

Read more

The Fight for Fair Elections in New Hampshire

by

By Betty Tamposi and Dan Weeks In a democratic republic like the United States, voters are meant to choose their politicians, not the other way around. Like many of our fellow Granite Staters, we take this bedrock principle of free and fair elections personally. One of us served for years as a Republican leader in the N.H. House of Representatives and later as an Assistant Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush. The other was a Democratic nominee for Executive Council (raised in a long line of Republican elected officials) and led the nonpartisan group Open Democracy. Although we do not agree on every …

Read more

A Blizzard. A Power Outage. A Failure of the Heart.

by

by Rivera Sun A continent-wide snow storm swept across the United States last month. From Seattle to Baton Rouge and from Dallas to Minneapolis, people grappled with road closures, shutdowns, power outages, and freezing temperatures. From sea to shining sea, ordinary people stepped up to take care of one another. My brother volunteered to snowblow the Seattle offices of an autism support center. A colleague in Portland, Oregon, posted warnings not to walk under the snapping, ice-laden branches of city trees. Friends in West Virginia popped back online to make sure everyone was fine after three days without Internet. When Texas megachurches refused to shelter …

Read more