Sunday Viewpoints
Blogzerpts / Opinions from buffalonews.com
Excerpts from reader commentary on News staffers’ online blog postings last week. Online comments come from registered users, but — unlike reviewed and verified Everybody’s Column letters — can be posted under pen names. (Updated: 02/07/10 6:39 AM )
Canisius High School leader Higgins enriched many lives
Editor’s Note: Canisius High School President James P. Higgins, S. J., died on Jan. 20, 2009, at age 54. This appreciation was written by his sister, a public librarian in Western New York. (Updated: 02/07/10 6:39 AM )
Loss of economic development commissioner hurts state
The 2010-2011 executive budget includes merging and streamlining state agencies. One proposal would make permanent a mistake that drove New York — mostly upstate — to the edge of an economic cliff. (Updated: 02/07/10 6:39 AM )
Return to Baghdad is bittersweet
Ifinally made it back to Baghdad. I’d left on May 29, 2006, unconscious on a stretcher after my CBS News team and the 4th Infantry Division patrol we’d been covering walked into the path of a 300-to 500-pound car bomb. (Updated: 02/07/10 6:39 AM )
Mitch Albom: Salinger’s greatest trick was to disappear
When someone told me J. D. Salinger had died, I jokingly asked, “How do they know?” (Updated: 02/08/10 10:31 AM )
Democrats must heed message of Massachusetts voters
The election of Republican candidate Scott Brown to the U. S. Senate seat in Massachusetts was one of the biggest upsets in American electoral history and one with enormous ramifications for national public policy and congressional politics. In winning the Senate seat long held by Sen. Edward (Updated: 01/31/10 6:13 AM )
The netherworld between what you need, what you want
Nobody puts a finer point on the difference between need and want like Mother Nature as she did this month in Haiti. (Updated: 01/31/10 6:13 AM )
WASHINGTON— If you think Congress stripped all federal funding from ACORN, think again. (Updated: 01/31/10 6:13 AM )
Eugene Robinson: Obama needs fighting words, winning actions
It’s ironic that President Obama could never be convincing as populist in chief. He had a modest upbringing—his family was on food stamps for a time—and he needed scholarships and loans to pay for his fancy education. He is no stranger to the struggles of everyday Americans. (Updated: 02/01/10 12:50 PM )
Group can play key role in fight against global warming
WASHINGTON— It’s hardly amazing that ACORN, the embattled community organizer that has done so much good in the nation’s inner cities, is considered a latter-day embodiment of the anti-Christ by the nation’s right-wing fringe. First came the baseless allegations of voter fraud that popped-up in the late stages of last year’s presidential election. Then two conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute did a gotcha video at several ACORN chapters seeking—and surprisingly, getting—advice on how to set up neighborhood bordellos. The gullible ACORN workers who dispensed the advice, it should be noted, were fired promptly by the group’s national office. (Updated: 01/31/10 6:13 AM )
The new green face of urban renewal
The new rouge of contemporary urban planners is double-coated in green. On one cheek gleams the dogma of environmentalists, and on the other the sober reality of economics. (Updated: 01/25/10 11:25 AM )
Google should pull the plug on China
Here’s hoping Google makes good on its threat to quit China. It’s time someone in the United States stopped coddling the Chinese police state. The U. S. government can’t, or won’t. (Updated: 01/25/10 11:26 AM )
DIPLOMACY GONE ASTRAY
In the late 18th century, Edward Gibbon published his enduring classic, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Rome’s demise, he explained, “was the inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest…[eventually] the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.” (Updated: 01/25/10 11:26 AM )
Gerry Rising: Not all snow is created equal, but all meets a watery end
Snow is an important part of our Niagara Frontier landscape, an aspect about which we have decidedly mixed feelings. We missed it this year when we had none through all of November, we then tired of it after a few days of shoveling, but finally our attitude will change again with the arrival of spring when we review those lovely snow scenes we photographed. (Updated: 01/25/10 11:18 AM )
Blogzerpts / Opinions from buffalonews.com
Excerpts from reader commentary on News staffers’ online blog postings last week. Online comments come from registered users, but — unlike reviewed and verified Everybody’s Column letters — can be posted under pen names. (Updated: 01/24/10 5:55 AM )