‘Rotterdam was built from the rubble by Rotterdammers and we don’t just take it apart for the phallus symbol of a megalomaniac billionaire. Not without a fight.'
The war of words between Russia and the United States over Ukraine escalated further on Tuesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin responded for the first time to the US written reply to Russia’s demands for security guarantees that were expressed in the form of a pair of draft treaties submitted by Moscow to the US and NATO in December.
On the menu today: Accounts of the phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky offer an unnerving portrait of a Ukrainian leader who is in denial about the risk of a full-scale Russian invasion, and an American leader who doesn’t want to send any more weapons, after equipping the Ukrainians to fight a ground war without any air cover.
California and New York were the first areas in the country to take steps toward vaccine passports last year. New York City implemented it, but Orange County didn’t, thanks to the efforts of human rights Attorney Leigh Dundas and holocaust survivor Vera Sharav.
As most Americans are aware, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case. The court will decide the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law banning abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Eight of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholics or Jews—groups historically victimized by religious discrimination. Yet the court’s emerging leader in defending religious freedom is its only mainline Protestant.
For many of us, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas is special for old and young. As Charles Dickens once observed, "For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself."
