By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley offers a craven mush of platitudes in a new policy book that is little more than a painful cry for political relevance.
As former President Donald Trump’s enabler in the United Nations where she served as U.S. ambassador, Haley brings together 16 essays on domestic and foreign policy in “American Strength: Conservative Solutions Worth Fighting For.”
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | If we don’t want to lose our freedoms and democracy in America, we’re going to have to fight to protect it.
Almost a year after the attempted violent takeover at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by right-wing zealots, it’s surprising how few organized efforts there are to reassert the philosophical foundations of our form of government.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | There’s a big difference between knowing something, understanding it and doing something about it.
The coronavirus pandemic illustrates this trichotomy perfectly. For example, we know it’s smart to wear masks to reduce transmission of the virus. But if you walk around any bar, restaurant or grocery store in South Carolina today, it’s clear we don’t understand the reality. Rather than doing what we know is right (to keep wearing masks), we ignore what we know and act as if everything is hunky-dory.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The fix has been in by members of the S.C. House for a long time. For months, they’ve been actors in a theatrical drama of their own creation to make it look like newly redrawn voting districts are fair. They’re not. In fact, their laughable work will make South Carolina’s noisy partisan divides worse.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Imagine if a gun shop started selling an accessory for an AR-15 rifle that offered to change the names of the three settings on the firing mechanism from (safety)-(single shot)-(full-auto) to F@CK-DONALD-TRUMP.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | A broad retrospective of the art of South Carolina-raised Jasper Johns is too much to absorb. Hundreds of paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures split between museums in New York and Philadelphia, cover several periods of the career of the artist, who still lives and works in Connecticut.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | When word came this week that a former journalism professor passed away, it led to thoughts about how people’s consumption and understanding of news has evolved.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | A school-to-prison pipeline emboldened by what’s been called a vague disorderly conduct law is closed for now, but the state attorney general wants it back. Instead of appealing a law that has wrongly criminalized student behavior for too long, S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson should let schools follow normal disciplinary protocols to do their jobs and stop wasting time in federal courts.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Charter schools, by their very nature, have governing boards made up of parents. They’re publicly funded, which requires them to follow general state education rules and keeps teachers in the state system, but the schools also are independent operationally from county school boards. South Carolina has about 75, which is about 1 percent of the nation’s charter schools.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Former President Jimmy Carter, who turned 97 on Friday, was born when trains were a common form of transportation. There were no interstates, information superhighways, fax machines, computers, emails or texts. Social media and instant communication to the other side of the world were the things of science fiction. Cars broke down a lot. Phones were elementary and not ubiquitous. Times were hard. A Depression was around the corner.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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