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Commentary: My family and I cheered at the Highland Park parade. Then gun violence shattered the joy
To my knowledge, I have never heard a semi-automatic rifle until Monday. Such a neat, orderly sound amid the terrified screams of children and families running for their lives. My family and I were in that holiday crowd in Highland Park, desperately sprinting toward safety we were not sure existed anymore. Somewhere nearby, there must have been the group of little kids who had been sitting on our left, and the elderly couple sitting behind us who waved as their grandchildren called out to them from a float. The faces of the young and old who had smiled and waved alongside us for the beginning ...
Chicago Tribune
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Editorial: Highland Park mass shooting a horrific stain on the Fourth of July
A year from now, the good people of Highland Park will be wondering whether to hold a parade. There will be a school of thought believing the town must get back to something approaching Independence Day normalcy, if only for the sake of its children; others will worry that a parade will trigger the trauma of 2022, when a hidden assailant fired his assault-style rifle in the direction of grandparents and kids, community stalwarts and hardworking parents. He killed six and sent 30 more to hospitals that were expecting nothing more of the day than a few minor injuries from fireworks. There will b...
Chicago Tribune
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‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ review: Gods, goats, Hemsworth and Portman, as Marvel tests the limits of camp
Twenty-nine films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe — a playful and flexible narrative arena in theory, too often a realm of granite solemnity in practice — if you can’t mess around a little then really: Why make all that money in the first place? In other words, the giant screaming goats hit the spot in “Thor: Love and Thunder,” which should be called “Thor: Love, Thunder, Goats, Guns N’ Roses.” The digital vessel-haulers known as Toothgrinder and Toothgnasher enjoy a modest but welcome amount of screen time in co-writer and director Taika Waititi’s aggressively nutty follow-up to “Thor: Rag...
Chicago Tribune
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'Thor: Love and Thunder' review: A Marvel movie so unworthy to wield Thor's hammer, it barely tries to lift it
Only a few superhero franchises have made it to a fourth movie, and you can usually sum up how bad they are in less than a sentence each: George Clooney's bat-nipples in "Batman and Robin" (1997), Nuclear Man fighting Superman on the moon in "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace" (1987). It brings me no pleasure to report "Thor: Love and Thunder" is worse. I wished I was actually watching "Batman and Robin" or "Superman IV," because for all their camp, those movies felt less pointless and more human than "Thor 4," a cheap corporate commercial for upcoming Marvel content. "Thor 4" feels like a Disn...
The Seattle Times
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John M. Crisp: Did Trump try to grab the steering wheel? Does it matter?
One of the most curious episodes to emerge from the House Jan. 6 committee hearings was described by Cassidy Hutchinson this way: After former President Donald Trump was told by the head of his Secret Service detail, Robert Engel, that the assets to take him to join the unruly crowd at the Capitol were not available, Hutchinson says, “the president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel, Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel, we’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then us...
Tribune News Service
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Editorial: Missouri legislation previewed how far post-Roe radicals may be ready to go
One of the more shameful moments in congressional history was the passage in 1850 of the Fugitive Slave Act. It required that even slavery-free Northern states must abet that evil institution by returning enslaved people who’d escaped from the South and believed they had attained freedom. With the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, America may again see attempts by states that restrict the freedom of some of their citizens to extend those restrictions into other states. Missouri lawmakers, for example, seriously considered a measure this year that would have presumed to punish out-of-sta...
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Editorial: The filibuster is further endangering abortion rights. It's time to scrap it
The irony is thick: A Republican president took office despite getting fewer votes than his opponent, then installed three conservative Supreme Court justices — and now that court majority has ignored America’s majority, not to mention its own precedent, to impose its ideological will on society. The fall of Roe v. Wade is the result of a series of minoritarian quirks in the nation’s political structure and the GOP’s single-minded exploitation of those quirks. With Republicans posed to retake Congress thanks to factors unrelated to actual merit, anti-choice extremism could ultimately be forced...
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Commentary: I’m a young resident physician who has learned how hard it is to navigate human suffering
I am a resident physician, a brand-new doctor. I am just beginning my residency training. The process of becoming a doctor is long and tedious and involves a tremendous amount of work and dogged commitment. We complete undergraduate education, four years of medical school, and three to five years of residency. The hardest part, though, is not academics or occupational stamina — but rather developing a personal and professional identity as you bear witness to the suffering of your fellow man. We as people collect experiences through our lives that shape us and our narrative. A number of these s...
Chicago Tribune
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Commentary: Why it is critical to talk to your kids about abortion rights
With the reversal of Roe v. Wade, one group that may feel unsure about how and whether to discuss the decline of women’s rights is parents. It’s tempting to assume that adult issues such as abortion are inappropriate or irrelevant from a child’s perspective. But as a developmental psychology professor and a (currently pregnant) parent, I would argue that it is critical to talk with your school-age children about abortion rights. Children are often ready to process more information and at younger ages than you might think. Making them active participants in understanding inequities in society i...
Chicago Tribune
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Commentary: Our 2 failing parties need to be shaken up by independents
For 16 years, I had the privilege of representing the people of Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District until I was narrowly defeated in the 2020 Democratic primary. I lost that race because I dared to not always follow in lockstep with my party in an era in which extreme partisanship and polarization rule. In a number of primary elections last week, both parties continued to reject candidates willing to ever deviate from the party line, including Illinois’ 15th District in which Rep. Rodney Davis lost the Republican primary. This trend is causing more extremity, more intransigence and more gridl...
Chicago Tribune
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