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De-link driver's licenses from the immigration wars

June 19, 2019  •  The Boston Globe

NEW YORK'S long, polarizing war over issuing driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants was finally resolved on Monday. After a heated debate, the state Senate passed a bill to overturn an 18-year-old ban, allowing residents to apply for a license regardless of their immigration status. The Senate vote sent the measure to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who signed it Monday night. With New York, there are now 13 states (plus the District of Columbia) in which proof of legal residence is not required to obtain a driver's license.

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Temptation, the Talmud, and the Pope

June 17, 2019  •  Arguable

THE LORD'S PRAYER, of all things, has been in the news.

The familiar supplication, which begins "Our Father, who art in Heaven," comes from Chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew, and has been recited by Christians for many generations. According to Catholic news sources, Pope Francis has officially approved a change to one phrase of the prayer — the one traditionally rendered "lead us not into temptation." The papal tweak, assuming it goes into effect, will slightly adjust the wording for Catholics, making it "Do not let us fall into temptation." (So far no change has appeared in the wording of the prayer as it is posted on the Vatican's English website.)

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Hong Kong is being strangled, and the free world just watches

June 16, 2019  •  The Boston Globe

MORE THAN a million marchers flooded Hong Kong's streets at the start of the week, far and away the biggest protests the territory has ever seen. An astonishing one-seventh of Hong Kong's population turned out in opposition to a proposed law that would, for the first time, authorize extraditions to mainland China. If the bill is enacted, any resident of Hong Kong accused of an offense might be subjected to China's grotesque and repressive judicial system, in which arbitrary detention and torture are common, and due process exists only at the pleasure of the ruling Communist Party.

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A grievous sinner, and a great American

June 9, 2019  •  The Boston Globe

IT WAS March 3, 1968, and America's most influential pastor, the preeminent leader of the civil rights movement, was in the pulpit of Atlanta's Ebenezer Bapist Church. His theme that Sunday was the neverending tension between good and evil — a tension that exists not merely in the abstract, not just "out somewhere" in the "forces of the universe," but in the heart of every human being.

Including his own.

"You don't need to go out this morning saying that Martin Luther King is a saint. Oh, no," he exhorted the congregation. "I want you to know this morning that I'm a sinner like all of God's children. But I want to be a good man."

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Non-diversity and the spelling bee

June 5, 2019  •  The Boston Globe

THE SCRIPPS National Spelling Bee makes news every year, but this year's competition was epic: For the first time ever, it ended with not one spelling champion or even two co-champions, but with eight winners. Winnowed down from 562 starting contestants, the final eight spellers had proved unconquerable through 20 rounds. "We're throwing the dictionary at you," said Jacques Bailly, the Spelling Bee's official pronouncer, "and so far, you are showing this dictionary who is boss."

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