Should residents feel guilty about their divided feelings about Micron in Clay? Although backers tend to act disgusted about residents who want solid answers to environmental concerns, given the challenges to fresh water supplies, trying to be proactive makes good sense. Many of us remember the pollution of Onondaga Lake…

To Claudia Tenney – Lake Ontario contributes millions of dollars to your shoreline district’s economy through recreation. A major contributor to that sum is the trophy fishery for salmon and trout. The Lake Ontario Biological Station in Oswego operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides data on the condition of the lake’s…

“This fight is not about paperwork. It’s about the principle that government works for the people.” This. This is the crux of the issue. Those of us who are going to have to live next to this potential polluting monstrosity deserve to know – as soon as possible – what…

Pete Seeger sang the song ‘Which Side Are You On’ in 1941 challenging people to make a choice between supporting working class America and the monied ruling class.  We are faced with a similar choice now in 2025.  And nothing illustrates that choice more cogently than the April 5 Hands…

Published on Syracuse.com on April 30th, 2025 We are America. We have taken our place among the world’s nations seriously. We understood our blessings, our freedoms, our quest for equal rights, even our affluence. We accepted that our blessings might require us to be compassionate, to share the products of…

Congressman John Mannion has been outspoken in his criticism of the Trump administration’s attempts to concentrate power in the executive branch and skirt or defy Constitutional and legal limits. Mannion has earned our respect by doing so. But he has been oddly silent on one important part of the Trump…

Hands Off rally on April 5th in Syracuse. Photo by Mark Rupert. On Saturday, April 5, millions of people attended more than 1,400 protests around the country and around the world. My Bluesky feed was filled with gorgeous pictures of Americans standing up for democracy.  Here in Syracuse, it was…

On Friday afternoon, Chuck Schumer and nine other Democratic Senators joined with their Republican colleagues on the key vote to enable passage of a stop-gap funding bill to keep the federal government running through September. In congressional jargon, this bill is referred to as a continuing resolution (CR).  Lots of…

I’m just back from attending the 2025 Global Summit on Constitutionalism at the University of Texas at Austin. This is an academic conference that assembles 300 scholars from around the world for three days of research presentations, keynote addresses, and discussion.  As always, I learned a lot, some of it…

I’m deeply concerned about ICE’s recent arrest of Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil. Mr. Khalil is a green card holder who is in this country legally and has not been charged with any crime. He has been detained purely because he exercised constitutionally protected free speech rights in ways…