The intersection of healthcare and immigration policy is found in the halls of hospitals and clinics across America, where increasing numbers of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) are filling in for doctors who won’t return, and state governments are doing their best to usher IMGs into practice where they’re sorely needed. Help (Badly) Wanted: Foreign Doctors … Read more
The language used to justify policy is…fraught. Every new program is a triumph, as is every cut to an existing one. Every new rule is a sea change, and every executive order a roadmap to utopia. These flowery-but-decisive statements come from all politicians, pointing in all directions, and they always have. But in the United … Read more
One of my first-year classes in college was History of Theater, in which I learned how the Greeks built amphitheaters into hillsides, carving out a semicircle of seating for the audience around the stage to maximize. The scenery for a play completes the circle, just as it does for any show in an amphitheater today. … Read more
Three more police officers were killed today, in Baton Rouge. Three injured. The same word used as in Dallas— “ambush.” The fear and despair I’m feeling right now are mostly due to three beliefs: that such killings a) might have been inevitable, b) will certainly only make things worse, and c) may well happen again. … Read more
The BBC has a profile on Omar El-Hussein, the man who carried out Saturday’s killings in Copenhagen. He apparently was assisted by two other men, who have since been taken in police custody. They were charged with providing El-Hussein with weapons and helping him escape after the attacks. We know El-Hussein was not an immigrant– … Read more
Yesterday a symposium to discuss blasphemy and the meaning of free speech was held at a cafe in Copenhagen called Krudttønden. In attendance at this meeting was Lars Vilks, a 68 year old Swedish man upon whose head the Islamic State placed a $100,000 bounty for his 2007 depictions of Islamic prophet Muhammad as a … Read more
Let me count the ones I see. 1. Obey the law, and you have nothing to fear.2. Break the law, and you deserve to be tortured to death.3. Rules #1 and #2 are applied equally to all Americans.4. Police never break the law themselves.5. When they do, they are never protected in ways civilians wouldn’t … Read more
Published today in the Wichita Eagle: Justice system ignored facts I don’t know whether to feel saddened or enraged from reading about the man choked to death on a New York City street. The sources indicate this type of restraint by law enforcement officers was banned 20 years ago, yet a Staten Island grand jury … Read more
Or, why good storytelling requires good representation: When the story doesn’t contain the “why,” the audience looks to the author. Let me back up. Writers are often advised to “write what you know.” That’s good advice, because you can’t write believably about what you don’t know. However, authors who took this advice to a logical … Read more
First, I didn’t talk at all yesterday about the statement of motivations in The Marriage Vow that preceded its fourteen provisions, which included two claims that have since been removed: Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in … Read more