Opinion Outpost

The Opinion Outpost features opinions and commentary on the latest hot topics from national news sources.

Traumatized by the election results, many Americans are asking: What now? Here are steps that any of us can take that can make a difference at the margins. Onward!

The Republican establishment couldn’t stand Trump. The Democratic establishment mocked him. The Republican nominee didn’t even really seem to have much of a campaign. He spent more on “Make America Great” hats than on polling. If you don’t count Newt Gingrich — and I don’t — only one major political historian, Allan Lichtman, had predicted that Trump would win. … But then the impossible happened.

… The Republican and Democratic nominees leave voters with no real choice. That’s nuts, because it implies that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are equally unpalatable and it misunderstands “choice” as profoundly as Trump misreads polls. He and Clinton may not be the political buffet of our dreams. But one entree is perilous, while the other has tired ingredients in a suboptimal sauce. Salmonella or salmon with cucumber and dill: That’s a choice. I know what I’m putting on my plate.

The failure to ask about climate change is a failure of journalism. I thought that the debate moderators had some very fine moments over the last few weeks, calmly drawing out the candidates. But the lack of a single question on the world’s biggest problem was a grievous error.

It is standard practice of police departments across the country to honor officers who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in doing their jobs. But a recent ceremony of the Los Angeles Police Department deserves special attention.

Only amid the most bizarre, most tawdry, most addictive election campaign in memory could the real story of 2016 be so effectively obliterated, namely, that with just four months left in the Obama presidency, its two central pillars are collapsing before our eyes: domestically, its radical reform of American health care, a.k.a. Obamacare; and abroad, its radical reorientation of American foreign policy — disengagement marked by diplomacy and multilateralism.

…If Dr. Paine, had been a physicist, chemist or cell biologist, such a fundamental, broadly applicable and hugely influential paradigm would probably have put him in contention for a Nobel Prize. But Paine was an ecologist, so he had no shot at the prestige, power and wealth that the Nobels bestow. The same can be said for the world’s top geologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, climatologists, crop scientists, botanists, entomologists and practitioners of many other fields.

The conversation — or argument — we’ve been having on immigration has been remarkably skewed. It’s been all about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, otherwise known as the “undocumented.” Actually, what counts far more are the estimated 31 million immigrants who are here legally and the roughly 1 million who gain legal entry every year.

In most of the rest of the world, parent-child co-sleeping is well-established, as we have found in our studies in Africa (Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia), Asia (Nepal, India) and Latin America (Mexico, Colombia) and as other anthropologists have reported from other sites in those areas. Indeed, many parents think it’s downright cruel to put a baby in a separate room or even a separate bed. Who would do such a heartless thing?

As the presidential campaign moves into its final stretch, about 7% of voters (depending on which poll you read) say they’re still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — more than enough to swing the election either way.

Kaepernick: To sit or to stand?

On August 8, Evan McMullin announced he is running as an independent for president. McMullin, 40, may not be well known, but it’s hard to imagine a more establishment resume.

Millions of Americans have been queasy contemplating the choice of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

What’s the best case for Donald Trump? The alternative is President Hillary Clinton.

The debate in our moment is not about why the police target poor black communities rather than rich white ones, or whether black people commit more crimes. It's about whether black people live in greater danger of not only being stopped by cops or being arrested, but also of being killed by cops for no real reason.

After an exhaustive, full-year investigation, the FBI concluded what we suspected from the start: Clinton showed a considerable lack of judgment and, in the process, she skirted up against the laws governing the treatment of classified information. But in the end, she did not behave in a manner that merited criminal prosecution. As Comey put it — persuasively — “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring criminal charges in this case.

Two years in the making, 800 pages long, gripping in tone, the report of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi — released Tuesday (June 28) — is the definitive account of the Sept. 11, 2012, Libya attacks that killed four Americans: Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.