Opinion
Let me say first that this is not a simple issue. I wish the Republican presidential candidates weren't pretending that it is. And let me say, too, that I admire a lot about the Catholic Church. It has been a leader in human rights in many, many areas. Catholics have
Opinion
Newt Gingrich now stands a good chance of being the Republican presidential nominee. I'm not sure politics can get any weirder than this. Gingrich is a long way from sewing up the nomination, obviously. But last week was quite a week. And Gingrich's rise - his win in South Carolina,
Opinion
Our little burg feels like a glass half empty, half full right now, and you can see that reflected in the national focus on us over the past few weeks. On the half-empty side: the threat of a Kodak bankruptcy is still in the air, and the national news media
Opinion
Oh, me. With the national news media hinting at bankruptcy for Kodak, it's a somber time here. So I was hoping our full-speed-ahead governor would announce something big in his State of the State address last week. I was hoping he had exciting ideas for popping up the state's economy -
Opinion
The plan to demolish an old building on the site of Genesee Brewing Company has me conflicted. The building in question is a massive structure. Imposing. A little weird. And it's unique, for sure: in appearance and in location. Brewery officials say that they have no use for it and haven't
Opinion
In withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, it would be nice to think we had taken a big step toward a more rational defense policy. And yet we are still at war in Afghanistan. And we don't seem to have learned much from the war we've just ended. As the troops headed home last
Opinion
Rochester, and an important field of health care, lost a real giant late last month with the death of Frank Williams. A bright, caring, and exceptionally visionary man, Frank was an expert and a trailblazer in caring for the elderly. His long, distinguished career included serving as medical director of
Opinion
The Republican Party's search for a presidential candidate has been so entertaining that you kinda hope it'll just go on and on. All the show needed was to have Donald Trump jump into the middle of it, preening and puffing and once again promoting Celebrity Apprentice. (New season starts February
Opinion
With great regularity, we come up with new ways to reform education in Rochester: we close schools and open new ones; we create middle schools, then put them back with high schools; we open charter schools, try to enlist 10,000 mentors, give prizes for reading books.... Can't we just cut the
Opinion
The supercommittee's failure to come up with a debt-reduction plan last week wasn't a surprise, and I'm not mourning the outcome. Frankly, I started rooting for failure a couple of weeks ago, as I listened to a talk by Bill Hartung, an expert on US military
News Articles
Several media are reporting that the San Francisco arts commission has cancelled one of its two contracts with sculptor Tom Otterness. The decision, reached yesterday after what a Bay Citizen reporter says was "an emotional meeting" of the commission, is the result of protests over Otterness's killing of a dog
Opinion
Rochester finally got a bit of good news on Monday, with the announcement that Windstream will maintain some of the Paetec operations in the Rochester area. And it will bring a few hundred employees downtown, renting part of a reconstructed building on the Midtown site. But note this: the 300 or
Opinion
Rochester is a city with a proud history of protests. Women's suffrage, abolition, anti-war, civil rights, labor rights, education: generation after generation, Rochesterians have mounted large, often effective protests on the major issues of the day. And right now a particularly significant protest, Occupy Rochester, is taking place in Washington
Opinion
The closer we get to the presidential election, the more worried I get - not just about the election outcome but also about what's happening to the country. And what's happening is being laid out in stark relief, in the data coming out of Washington, in the reaction to the
Opinion
An important ethical drama is playing out right now at the Memorial Art Gallery. And too few people are taking it seriously enough (Our story on the controversy can be found here.) The drama concerns New York City sculptor Tom Otterness, one of four artists awarded commissions for
Opinion
I've been thinking a lot about risk lately. And the importance of risk tolerance. It's hard to watch the stock market and not think about those things, but I've been thinking about risk and "personality": whether risk tolerance is something innate. And whether it's in the DNA of a community. Our
Opinion
All across the state, Governor Cuomo's regional economic councils will be wrapping up their work soon and sending their bright ideas to Albany. The goal is to win some of the $1 billion that the governor has offered for strong development ideas. I'm as parochial as the next person,
Opinion
Quite a few readers have questioned City's focus on "temperament" in our Democratic primary endorsements for Rochester school board. Those readers tended to be supporters of candidates we didn't endorse, but the issue's important, and it deserves discussion. Here's the reasoning behind our concern: There's nothing wrong with anger. In fact,
Opinion
I'd say that we're in a battle for the heart and soul of America, but journalists have a rule about avoiding clichés. Still, 10 years after 9/11, what are we to make of what's happening in Washington? I felt a little encouraged as President Obama wrapped up his big jobs speech last
Opinion
It has been nearly 10 years since that beautiful election-day morning in September, when the unimaginable happened in Manhattan, Washington, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The pain is still raw, and the grief still close to the surface. And it takes almost nothing to bring back the mental images: the towers struck,
