A review of “Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story” (M. Hirono, 2021)
Review as published in the Washington Post on May 21, 2021
“Heart of Fire” traces Mazie Hirono’s journey from poor immigrant to U.S. senator. When Hirono writes about her childhood, her mother and family, their arrival in Hawaii from Japan, and the poverty, hardship, fear and struggle they faced, “Heart of Fire” is a revelatory, evocative, deeply moving book.
Published in USA Today on August 13, 2018
It isn’t on Rolling Stone’s list of 2018’s biggest farewell tours, but it’s time. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn should announce that for the next three months, they are going to travel the country and campaign like heck, raise lots of money and make sure Democrats win a majority of House seats in November — and that after the election, all of them will step down from their positions to make room for a new generation of Democratic leaders.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in USA Today on April 12, 2018
For the first 200 years of this nation’s history, only three House speakers resigned from office, all because they were accepting other political appointments.But in just the past 20 years, an equal number of House speakers, all of them Republicans, have decided to depart under very different circumstances.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in US News on October 4, 2017
American democracy itself was on trial Tuesday at the Supreme Court. At least that’s what Paul M. Smith, the Washington attorney representing challengers to Wisconsin’s extremely gerrymandered legislative redistricting plan, was arguing.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in US News on August 17, 2017
When President Donald Trump likened Confederate Army commander Robert E. Lee to slave holders and Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and asked if we should pull down memorials to those two men along with statues of Lee and other Confederates, he perhaps inadvertently raised an important and extremely difficult question about American history.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in US News on May 25, 2017
I have never been physically assaulted by a politician. I have however been verbally threatened on more than one occasion by politicians who didn’t like the questions I was asking or the stories I was writing. What happened in Montana Wednesday when congressional candidate Greg Gianforte threw reporter Ben Jacobs of The Guardian to the ground and punched him is unconscionable. Gianforte belongs in jail, not in the House of Representatives.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in USA Today on March 31, 2017
Amid the postmortem over everything that went wrong with the Republican health reform effort, we shouldn’t overlook the role of the system that elects members of Congress. It not only contributed to the massive failure, it is also predictive of what we will see from the Republican Congress moving forward.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in US News on February 13, 2017
Donald Trump has hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, next to his desk in the Oval Office and members of his staff are touting the idea that the two men have a lot in common. Vice President Mike Pence has boasted of Trump’s victory, “There hasn’t been anything like this since Andrew Jackson.” That may actually be true. There are already signs of similarities between the two men and it’s a cause for significant concern.Please click here to read the full article.
Published in USA Today on February 8, 2017
We didn’t need more evidence that this country is in for a very rough couple of years, but we got some anyway with the squeaker Senate confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. DeVos, who married into the Amway fortune, has given $200 million to Republican candidates and causes over the years. She has long been a strong advocate for school choice, including vouchers and unregulated for-profit charter schools. She has demonstrated both unfamiliarity and hostility toward public education, even calling public schools a “dead end.”Please click here to read the full article.
Published in USA Today on January 20, 2017
President Trump’s short inaugural address sounded the same themes he repeated throughout his divisive campaign. While it almost certainly resonated with his supporters, it is unlikely to have reassured many of the 65.8 million voters who did not cast a ballot for him. The overall tone of the speech seemed almost angry and grim — with Trump announcing that he is taking on Capitol Hill and all of the political leaders who have preceded him as well as much of the rest of the world.Please click here to read the full article.
