The triviality of our politics is the real emergency
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
February 17 at 7:17 PM
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) learned that President Trump would declare a national emergency to shift around money to finance his border wall, her denunciation was predictable. But her way of expressing outrage was not. The issue she used to make her point was important ...
... she recalled the slaughter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, 2018, when 14 students and three staff members were gunned down. “You want to talk about a national emergency?” Pelosi asked. “Let’s talk about today, the one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America. That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would.”
... on Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee .. voted 21 to 14 to send a bill requiring background checks .. to the House floor.
It was the first serious vote on a gun-reform measure since 2013, when the Senate fell six votes short of the 60 needed to advance a background-checks bill ... It was also the most significant gun-sanity measure to move through the House Judiciary Committee since 1993.
... as important as this step was, it received scant media notice. The drowning out of news that mattered tells us a great deal about our political moment ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-national-emergency-is-the-triviality-of-our-politics/2019/02/17/4a8959c6-3159-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?utm_term=.5667bac046db
= new reply since forum marked as read