The new Texas anti-abortion law is unconstitutional as its purpose and effect is to hinder, if not to entirely prevent, the free exercise of a Texas woman’s right to an abortion under Roe vs. Wade. It is also unconstitutionally vague, arbitrary, overbroad, unreasonable and dangerous.
My mother, Muriel Fischer Rothman, was a gorgeous, tough, elegant, sharp, classy, Bronx girl, with a dry and cutting sense of humor. She tolerated no fools. But she was always there for me.
I recently read an article in New Jersey Globe that said, incorrectly, that when the New Jersey Republican plan for Congressional Redistricting was enacted and presented as a fait accompli to the New Jersey Congressional Delegation in December 2011, that I considered running in their gerrymandered 5th Congressional District, but ultimately decided to run in my home 9th Congressional District, because I thought I would lose a race in the 5th. Not true.
Will self-learning computers, initially programmed by humans, continue to be governed by the judgments of our relatively slow-thinking homo sapiens species? According to Yuval Noah Harari, whose three non-fiction books have each spent months on the best-seller lists, humans have created ever-more powerful computers to examine, draw patterns from and create more effective approaches to human productivity, health, happiness, longevity and perhaps immortality.
In an age when so many are rightfully suspicious that our elected officials don’t have a vision that addresses the realities of most Americans, it is time to focus on what most of us agree are the major needs in our country. Needs that the latest Republican tax law appears to ignore and make much worse.