Commentary

As the Bible tells the story, Moses delivers his people from bondage and to the “promised land,” but even with all his efforts, he is not allowed to enter. He must gaze upon it from a distance. This, I fear, is the story of Stacey Abrams. She built the huge voter registration and turnout machine that helped Joe Biden carry Georgia in 2020 and helped the state elect its first Jewish and Black senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, giving Democrats control of the Senate.

Allowing 35 million Americans to delay paying their federal student loans was a questionable policy when it began in March 2020 in the depth of the pandemic crisis. It’s a terrible idea now. The White House should not extend the student-loan moratorium, as The Post has reported it is considering doing when it expires at the end of the year. Such a move would be the eighth time the debt freeze has been prolonged.

The desire to collect historical objects is as old as humanity itself, and this appetite for antiquity can be seen throughout Maryland. As professional archaeologists, my colleagues and I have recovered ancient Indigenous stone tools in a 19th century farmhouse basement and found 7,000-year-old artifacts on a 700-year-old Native American site. In both cases, people probably stumbled across these objects on the ground and marveled at the link to the past. It is important to realize, however, that archaeology is a profession that requires training and care. It is not so much what you find, but the meaning and context behind those discoveries, that is most valuable.

“Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” — Francis Young, Drug Enforcement Administration administrative law judge (1988). These words ring as true today as they did almost 35 years ago. The DEA at the time disregarded its own judges ruling on whether cannabis should be rescheduled to a less restrictive level. With the passage of Question 4 on the ballot, which passed with almost two-thirds approval, cannabis will be legal for recreational use on a limited basis. I see the disconnect between how we treat this compared to alcohol and tobacco. There is no law that I know of which limits how much alcohol or tobacco you can have if you are over the legal age limit.

Plastic recycling isn’t working. Only about 6% of plastic in the U.S. is recycled, and the vast majority of all the plastic ever produced on this planet still exists somewhere. In the ocean alone, it is estimated that tens of trillions of pieces of plastic lie on the sea floor — that is, what hasn’t been pulverized by currents into micro-particles or is floating brazenly on the surface. Ocean plastic is even finding its way into the human food chain. Despite all of this, the plastics industry is spending millions to convince us that recycling is the answer, even though, according to a recent joint NPR/PBS investigation, their own internal studies suggest otherwise.

With all the criticism heaped on law enforcement in recent years, from claims of racial profiling and use of excessive force to outright corruption, it’s fair to wonder whether private security guards — especially those who carry weapons — are also receiving sufficient scrutiny. That concern has been underscored in recent weeks by multiple shootings involving civilian armed guards, who are often employed by businesses and affluent neighborhoods seeking to supplement the services of their local police departments.

With 2022′s election night in the rearview mirror, the 2024 presidential election will soon dominate the headlines. Donald Trump is still popular among Republicans and will likely run. As he said earlier this month, “in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again,” and last week, he promised to make a “special announcement“ at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 15.

Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for the left-wing newspaper Haaretz, was appalled after the Israeli electorate gave a far-right alliance nearly 11% of the vote, making it the third-largest parliamentary bloc in the Knesset. He calls the bloc leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a “fascist,” a description that fits a man who once kept a portrait of Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein in his living room.