Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Abraham McLaughlin

“Keeping up with today’s national and global developments can feel like living in a cauldron of political pressure. If we’re not in the storm ourselves, the sheer volume of political twists and turns can make us feel numb to the news. Yet, looking to those who have withstood the storm and triumphed shows us that responding with grace and confidence in good starts with the truths we hold in our heart. The Bible offers compelling examples. Consider the spiritual clarity and bravery of four individuals: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel. They’d been taken from their home in Israel and were being indoctrinated by their Babylonian captors. Yet they held in their hearts strong spiritual truths – and got to witness dramatic turnarounds. In Babylon, the pressure – political, religious, and cultural – was ferocious. One of the world’s most powerful kings was insisting that all his subjects worship a lifeless statue (see Daniel 3).” (02/03/25)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2026/0203/Facing-political-pressure-with-spiritual-strength

Source: Hullabaloo
by Tom Sullivan

“Republicans enjoy using the Jim Crow-era Democratic Party’s support for segregation as proof that their embrace of white nationalism is not worth mentioning. It’s bothsidesism as a ‘get out of racism free’ card. There was a time post-September 11 when the GOP’s bogieman du jour was from somewhere vaguely Middle East or Muslim. We were coached to become a nation of bedwetters convinced that bearded men with long, curved knives were coming to kill us all in our beds. We packed heat and opened fire on anything that went bump in the night either at home or abroad. Now it’s anyone nonwhite.” (02/04/26)

https://digbysblog.net/2026/02/04/taking-trophies/

Source: Mother Jones
by Melissa Lewis & Daniel Moattar

“Donald Trump’s unbelievable year of pardons, visualized.” (02/04/26)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/trump-pardons-2025-january-6-fraud/

Source: Washington Post
by George F Will

“As the national debt is a few months from reaching $39 trillion, and perhaps $40 trillion by the end of this year, it is puzzling how unperturbed the political class is. Or perhaps not. Writer and political agitator Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) said: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’ Or pretending not to. A bipartisan congressional consensus, more alarming than partisan rancor, is: There are no long-term fiscal gains without intense short-term political pains. So, because today’s congressional careers do not yet seem likely to coincide with coming dire consequences, let them come. In 2016, a budget expert was allotted 20 minutes to brief Donald Trump on those possible consequences. After five minutes, Trump said, ‘Yeah, but I’ll be gone.’ He was perfectly in sync with the political mainstream he professes to supplant.” (02/04/26)

https://archive.is/MDrjS

Source: Common Dreams
by Anthony Pahnke

“By now, we have heard the mantra that President Donald Trump was right to close the border, but wrong in his heavy-handed approach to immigration enforcement. We are also told that if he would have simply done what most Americans wanted, that is, arrest and deport violent criminals, then his poll numbers would be higher, and his administration wouldn’t find itself embroiled by crisis in the aftermath of two killings at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis. But this claim (that the problem with Trump’s immigration agenda is mainly about enforcement tactics) is flawed. Seriously addressing this country’s ongoing immigration crisis will require policy change, and to get to that point, there needs to be a narrative shift in this country away from indiscriminately criminalizing all undocumented people to humanizing them.” (02/04/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/sensible-immigration-policy