MiamiHerald.com: Other Views

Republicans knocking on immigration’s door

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:52 EST

Historically, when economic times are tough the topic of illegal immigration gains prominence in the nation’s political discourse. This election is no different. Immigration has become a cornerstone in all of the candidates’ stump speeches and a mainstay issue in the GOP primary debates. Unfortunately, too often the contributions of Hispanic-Americans get lost in the xenophobic vitriol over illegal immigration.

The GOP’s tribal warfare

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:44 EST

This was the week Mitt Romney should have sealed the Republican presidential nomination. He was expected to win Tuesday’s caucuses in Colorado, to win or tie in Minnesota and to do credibly well in Missouri. Instead, the former Massachusetts governor managed to lose all three contests to Rick Santorum, a candidate who has spent most of the campaign stuck near the bottom of the polls.

To Sen. Storms: Let them eat cake

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:46 EST

Up in Tallahassee, the irrepressible Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Ronda Knows Best, wants to peek into the grocery carts of poor people and tell them what they can’t buy with food stamps, a push that’s getting the not-shy Storms attention from National Public Radio to the New York Times.

Have Russians moved beyond apathy and cynicism?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:45 EST

The wave of protests against the rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia brings back memories of another winter when Moscow stood poised for change. And it has made me wonder whether at long last, the cynical and apathetic Russians I met back then have been finally replaced by a new generation ready to fight again.

Setting record straight on a program to help Cuba

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:58 EST

Totalitarian regimes and their apologists have turned the manipulation of facts and the distortion of reality into a science. Dictatorships believe that political power flows from moral power, therefore character assassination of their opponents is imperative.

The unruliness of Cuba’s law

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:59 EST

Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martinez Isaac are the names of the last three Cuban citizens to face a firing squad. They were arraigned on April 5, 2003, charged under Cuba’s Law 93 of Dec. 20, 2001, known as the “Cuban Law Against Terrorist Acts”, for hijacking a ferry and taking hostages.

For Komen, no going back to charity as usual

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:00 EST

So that’s it then.

More wasted money in Liberty City

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:42 EST

I’m sure you’ll be as relieved as I was to learn that four — count ’em four — small businesses in Liberty City will soon get their facades spruced up thanks to $428,545 of taxpayers’ money. It’s small change compared to the millions, nay hundreds of millions, poured into Liberty City since the 1980 McDuffie riots, but still worth our attention.

Catholics and healthcare: An issue of conscience

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:42 EST

Most Americans can hardly believe we’re having a national debate about birth control in the 21st century — more than 50 years after The Pill became available and decades after condoms became as commonplace as, well, balloons.

Venezuela: Out! Out! Out!

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:36 EST

María Corina Machado has written an open letter to Fidel Castro that has shaken cyberspace. I must have received 300 copies since it began to circulate through the Internet. It doesn’t go unread.

Red lines in the sands of Iran

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:35 EST

There are three red lines when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program. The first is the moment when Iran tunnels so deeply underground that Israeli bombs will be incapable of doing real damage. The second is when the tunneling goes even deeper and the United States’ “bunker buster” bombs will be insufficient. And the third, well, that has already passed. It is the conviction that the current Iranian regime will never let Israel live in peace.

Which way the Hispanic vote?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:34 EST

In a recent ABC News/Univision News survey the Hispanic/Latino vote in Florida favors President Obama 50 percent, over Mitt Romney’s 40 percent and 52 percent for Obama, over Newt Gingrich’s 38 percent. That is not significantly different from the 57 percent of the Florida Hispanic vote that Obama took in 2008 race.

Santorum, Republicans in Congress want to replay Cold War in Latin America

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

Rick Santorum’s recent electoral victories aren’t welcome news in most of Latin America. Nor is the increasingly hostile rhetoric coming out of Republicans in Congress.

Stop Super Pacs with a fair-elections amendment

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

The 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case is fast becoming as explosive as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) or Roe v. Wade (1973). It took almost 60 years before the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy endorsement of “separate but equal” treatment of the races in Brown v. Board of Education, and opponents of abortion are still waiting (probably in vain) for Roe to go.

Dictators must be held accountable

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

Two men whose brutal dictatorships ended in the 1980s are in the news because courts in the countries they once ruled are considering whether to bring them to trial for their crimes while they held power. This continues an important trend of the past two decades in which more than 60 heads of government have been prosecuted by international and national courts, either for corruption or human rights abuses, or for a combination of these crimes.

Mitt Romney and the power of losing

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

Mitt Romney’s recent losses to Rick Santorum in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota revealed a truism that Romney might want to study — but not too much!

It’s 2012, and we’re still arguing about birth control

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

Oh, dear, what is that baying? It sounds like the religious right has let slip the dogs of culture war.

No casinos for now, what then?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

It may be more of a suspension than surrender, but at least for now the proposal for mega casinos in Florida is off the table.

Don’t let BP fines paid for spill disappear into federal black hole

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

Barrels of bile were spilled in weeks leading up to the Florida primary. But that’s just a clean-up on aisle three compared to the epic five million barrels of crude oil that paralyzed the Gulf Coast states a couple of years ago.

What we lose when we ‘stand our ground’

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

On March 18, 2010, Quentin Rashad Wyche and Kendall Berry, two FIU football players, argued about a girl. Boys arguing about girls may be a universal feature of university life, but this argument ended tragically when Wyche stabbed Berry in the heart with a pair of scissors.

Progress in ending AIDS, TB, malaria but now funding is threatened

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:49 EST

Poverty and disease leave little to celebrate, but an important milestone in the new millennium just passed — the 10th anniversary of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Jan. 28 was a historic date to be celebrated, and one that calls for urgent political action.