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Want to end border chaos? Bennet guestworker bill offers a way

During his final days in office, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey stacked unsightly shipping containers along the U.S.-Mexico border at a cost of $82 million. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, up to his usual Scroogian border tricks, continued to herd asylum-seekers onto buses bound for so-called “sanctuary cities,” while dispatching National Guard troops to string concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s another of his tough-guy ploys to thwart what he calls an “invasion.” Never mind that these invaders are desperate men, women and children fleeing danger and despair in places ...

Guardian on Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s highly choreographed visit to Washington was a significant international moment. Not long ago, Mr. Zelenskyy had been adamant that his place was always on the frontline with his people. This week, however, he made a lightning trip in person, via Poland, to Washington itself, meeting President Joe Biden at the White House and delivering a primetime address to the U.S. Congress before heading back into his suffering country less than 24 hours later. The visit was much more than a Christmas celebration of Ukraine’s defiance and of Mr. Zelenskyy’s ...

Take advantage of gun lock program

Minnesotans can get simple-to-use devices at no cost under a state program that can protect kids and adults. A device that’s free, easy to use and could save a life. It’s hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t take advantage of innovative, ongoing programs that deliver gun locks straight to Minnesotans’ homes at no cost. The throngs who attended the State Fair this year may already have one or more on hand. To kick off the Safe and Secure Minnesota campaign, the state Departments of Public Safety and Natural Resources gave away more than 20,000 gun locks at last summer’s ...

End proxy voting in Congress

The House of Representatives spent Friday passing the $1.65 trillion omnibus spending blowout, and the bill is loaded with earmarks and pet priorities from healthcare to public lands that few Members have bothered to read. This is no way to run a government, and compounding the embarrassment is that half of the lawmakers had already ditched Washington for the holidays. The House had roughly 230 “active proxy letters” on Friday. Speaker Nancy Pelosi through a rule change allowed Members to vote by proxy in 2020, a putatively temporary measure to mitigate the risks of Covid-19. But ...

Getting back to norm with presidential returns

In 2020, President Donald Trump and Melania Trump paid no federal income taxes by claiming millions in dubious deductions and carrying over losses from previous years. Somehow, that’s not the most scandalous detail to emerge following the House’s four-year legal brawl to obtain Mr. Trump’s tax returns. It turns out the Internal Revenue Service did not conduct — let alone complete — mandatory examinations of Mr. Trump’s returns while he was president, despite its own internal policy from 1977 requiring such reviews and the White House’s claims that they were happening. A ...

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan loves to talk about government oversight

Unfortunately, the Urbana Republican, who represents portions of Lorain County, views investigatory power as a way to strike at his enemies rather than embracing the purpose for which it was intended: providing accountability and good government. Just as bad, Jordan’s insistence on oversight evaporates whenever he and his allies fall under scrutiny. His hypocrisy has been on full display in his refusal to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters. They were bent on ...