Recent Articles
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on May 15th, 2012
Will this community ever do what it takes to ensure that its poorest children get the education they deserve? I'm not optimistic. We talk a good game, but we don't do much.
Every few years, though, we get a chance at a fresh start: a new mayor, a new school superintendent,
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on May 7th, 2012
"We have so many good kids. We have so many good teachers. Yet when you look into the eyes of those students, you cannot help but remember the statistics. Less than half of them will make it to graduation. How could we have come to that? How can
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on May 1st, 2012
What a fragile state we're in right now in our little city.
We have a city budget under increasing pressure, a high poverty level, a continuing problem of black-on-black crime, a school district graduating thousands of children poorly equipped for the future....
Not everything is bleak. In fact, in a
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on April 24th, 2012
This year's election campaign is going to be a heck of a thing to watch, right down to the local level.
In the Rochester region, much of the attention will be on the race between Louise Slaughter and Maggie Brooks for Slaughter's seat in Congress. But before we get
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on April 10th, 2012
[UPDATED FROM AN EARLIER ARTICLE] The Rochester school board may be nearing the end of its search for a new superintendent. Early this morning, the school board announced that it has narrowed the search to two finalists: the district's current interim superintendent, Bolgen Vargas, and a Houston, Texas, school
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on April 3rd, 2012
Last week, as the Supreme Court seemed to be ready to overturn the federal health-care act, some liberal journalists thought they'd found a silver lining. Now, they said, we can get a single-payer, universal health care system.
But there's not a bat's chance that'll happen. Harsh right-wingers have taken
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on March 27th, 2012
There are multiple concerns related to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, not the least being gun control and Stand Your Ground laws.
RIT criminal justice professor John Klofas cites "incredible shifts in law over the past 10 to 12 years." And, he notes, they've "all gone in the same direction": the
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on March 20th, 2012
In two small villages in Afghanistan's Kandahar province last week, tragedy struck the families of 16 people, most of them women and children.
You know the story. A 38-year-old soldier who had served three tours of duty in Iraq before being sent to Afghanistan, is believed to have gone on
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on March 13th, 2012
As our Chris Fien reports, the City of Rochester is preparing to borrow from the state pension fund - so it can pay its escalating pension costs. Mayor Tom Richards says he doesn't want to do it, but he has to come up with the money to meet the city's
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on March 6th, 2012
That we are having a debate about contraception in this day and age is astonishing.
That contraception is the focus of a campaign for the presidency of the United States - and that the debate has taken on the tone it has - is appalling.
At one level - the intersection of
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Recent Blog Posts
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on May 18th, 2012
I don't know what to make of the business about Joe Ricketts and the Jeremiah Wright-Barack Obama ad-that-wasn't-an-ad.
It's nice, I suppose, that Ricketts himself disowned the thing, nice that Mitt Romney sorta ran from it.
But seriously: is anybody surprised about any of this? Really?
Ricketts, who founded TD Ameritrade,
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on May 17th, 2012
It's clear that the economy will overwhelm every other issue in the presidential campaign. And Barack Obama has a tough challenge; news about the US economy is mixed, at best. And the economic problems in Europe could make things worse.
A recent Brookings report says Americans think the next generation
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on May 1st, 2012
I don't want to get too excited about yet another group that will study how we can do a better job educating our children. But the one Governor Cuomo announced yesterday at least has some of the ingredients it needs.
Cuomo has named a 15-member committee to assess the
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 30th, 2012
Liberal commentators in the media are often accused of exaggerating the faults of Republicans in Congress and ignoring those of Democrats. So it was enlightening this morning to hear Steve Inskeep's discussion with Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on NPR's Morning Edition this morning, laying out just how
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 26th, 2012
The Hill website is calling attention to an important speech delivered at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday: by Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Rubio is believed to be on Mitt Romney's list of potential vice presidential candidates, so what he's saying is more than a little newsworthy.
Rubio's topic on Tuesday
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 25th, 2012
After months and months of tension, the Rochester school board has chosen Bolgen Vargas as the district's new superintendent. Now the folks in charge of the district can relax a bit and focus all of their attention on giving the city's children the best education they can.
Vargas, who
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 19th, 2012
"War news" for the past day has been dominated by the story of US soldiers posing for photos holding body parts from dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. That atrocity, of course, will make things worse in our misguided war there.
But adding to the pain of hearing that story
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 16th, 2012
The Maggie Brooks-Louise Slaughter campaign could be one of the most exciting - and most informative - races this region has had in years. But if a D&C Sunday article is any indication, Brooks won't let that happen.
The D&C's Jill Terreri tried to get Brooks to express an
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 12th, 2012
It seems early to be speculating about whom Romney will pick as his vice-presidential candidate, but lots of journalists are doing it. And given John McCain's disastrous choice, maybe we all ought to be paying attention right now.
So I'll pass along a link to a pretty extensive look
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on April 11th, 2012
The inevitable happened sooner than it might have, and Mitt Romney can now focus on the general election, swatting away, on occasion, comments from the irrelevant Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich.
Although it would have helped President Obama if Rick Santorum had stayed in the race a little longer,
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