Protect a woman's right to access abortion

 When a state denies access to health care

Echo opinion letters published in The Denver Post

Re: “Woman blocked from having abortion,” December 10 news story

As the state of Texas denies a Texas woman resident the right to terminate a pregnancy in which the unborn child has medical issues as well as the mother risking possible health issues if carried to term, have the rights of an individual gone for the sake of political postures?

If this unborn child survives, since the state refused one’s wishes, are they going to accept the responsibility of funding the care this child may need or is it then the parents’ responsibility? 

Texas, you can’t have it both ways by denying individual rights and then passing responsibility on to others. If you want to make laws taking away rights, you better support your positions and support the outcomes of your decisions.  From  Dave Usechek, in Parker Colorado

Dear Editor:  If a woman has received the sad news from her doctor that her fetus could not possibly survive and the humane solution is to have an abortion, why does the court have the power to overrule this request? Do they presume to be God?

It looks like we have returned to the back ally and coat hanger procedures. Dismantling Roe vs. Wade  turned our country into a court system of barbaric lunatics. Men should not have any voice in this matter; it’s the woman’s body. From Elaine Little, in Denver, Colorado

American has failed these children- Supreme Court upholds politically driven agendas

Editorial echo opinion published in The Denver Post:

‘I lost a piece of my heart,’ says mom of 10-year-old shot dead along with his classmates, educators when gunman barricaded himself in 4th grade classroom at the Texas Robb Elementary School.

Look at the photos of the 19 children – fourth-graders about to celebrate the beginning of summer – and ask if collectively we did all we could to protect them from a traumatic, painful death in a place they thought was safe. Many of the photos grieving families are releasing were taken the day before the shooting as students celebrated making the honor roll.

America failed these children.

We failed the students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, just as we failed students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a decade ago.

The gunman may solely be responsible for firing the bullets that shattered bodies in these and other schools, but we supplied the tools and the vulnerable target.

More than half of our country believes that this price – dead bodies in elementary schools, teachers lives cut short trying to protect children, lost lives in grocery stores, stray bullets that hit sleeping babies – is worth the freedom to own almost any gun and ammunition desired.

The Denver Post editorial board does not hold that belief.

On the contrary, we support an abundance of simple regulations that would pass constitutional scrutiny, prevent mass shootings, and reduce casualties when shootings occur. These policies are simple, popular, and should be bipartisan: impose mandatory waiting times, and require gun safety training and much more rigorous background checks, regulate ammunition sales and gun features. This is by no means a comprehensive list, nor would it be true that any politician should require all of these to be part of a bill.

Legislation at both the state and federal levels reasonably restricting what type of “arms” Americans can “bear” and more specifically which Americans should be barred from bearing any arms is fully in accordance with past rulings of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008, District of Columbia vs. Heller, that reasonable restrictions on firearms were constitutional.

The case was built upon United States vs. Miller, in a ruling that found a ban on sawed-off shotguns to be constitutional.

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, in an opinion that was long overdue. “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ ”

The case built upon United States vs. Miller, a ruling that found a ban on sawed-off shotguns to be constitutional.

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, in an opinion that was long overdue. “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ ”

Law are in place to impose restrictions on all sorts of constitutional rights. The right to bear arms is no different.

Unless the new court veers dramatically from these precedents — as a majority of justices seem likely to do with Roe vs. Wade — it would be prudent for lawmakers to operate under the assumption that this is the test for reasonable restrictions on weapons in this country.

If the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court wishes to, once again, show disdain for precedent and the rulings of their predecessors, we should give them the room they need to expose their politically driven rulings.

Tragically, Congress allowed a ban on semi-automatic rifles with certain features to expire. Millions of these deadly weapons have been sold, making it likely that a court would struggle to find that these guns are not in common use. But we think restrictions on the features of these guns would withstand the Heller/Miller test. 

Shotguns cannot be outlawed but sawing off the barrel makes the gun an entirely different tool. At a minimum, semi-automatic rifles should be required to have a permanently affixed magazine, like a cylinder in a revolver, that must be reloaded one bullet at a time.

Neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court stand in the way of life-saving restrictions on guns and ammunition. 

Men and women who serve this country in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are the only impediments to protecting our children.

Echo opinion: Media is accountable to fight antisemitism

Echo Opinion published in The Denver Post: For Colorado’s Jewish community, praying in peace means confronting anti-Semitism.

by Scott Levin, Joseph R. Black and Jay Strear.

November 9 and November 10, 1938

We are deeply grateful that Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker* and three congregants at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas were able to escape safely after being taken hostage during last Saturday’s worship services. This attack against a sacred community in the middle of Sabbath services should be shocking to all people who share the bedrock principle that all of us, no matter our religion, should be allowed to pray free from fear.

The trauma caused by the perpetrator of this heinous act extended far beyond the small congregation in Colleyville. It added to the concerns of Jews in Colorado and around the country that such a horrific event could happen in their synagogues. While the hostage-taker’s focus may have been on the release of a convicted terrorist with links to Al Qaeda, he did not choose a library, shopping mall or church to try to leverage his ask; he chose a synagogue. This was an act of antisemitism, plain and clear.

Antisemitism has reached a high-water mark in the United States. Unfortunately, being on edge and hypervigilant is very much a part of the American Jewish experience. We saw it in the aftermath of the rally in Charlottesville in 2017, when white supremacists chanted “Jews shall not replace us” while marching with their tiki torches across the University of Virginia campus; the deadly shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh in 2018 and Poway in 2019, and the subsequent attacks on Jewish targets in Jersey City, New Jersey and Monsey, New York.

In 2020, 2,024 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in the United States were reported to the Anti-Defamation League, the third-highest year for incidents against American Jews since ADL started tracking such data in 1979. In Colorado, there were 60 antisemitic incidents reported in 2020, just one less than the high set in 2019. A 2021 ADL poll found that well over half of Jewish Americans have either experienced or directly witnessed some form of an antisemitic incident in the last five years.

The lack of attention to such a shocking antiemetic terrorism serves to normalize antisemitism.

So, when The Denver Post failed last Sunday to give prominent attention to the taking of hostages at gunpoint during worship services in Colleyville, it was painful. 

Sadly, the synagogue story was relegated to the “Briefs” section on page 13, a section that included a story about the value of superstar Prince’s estate. 

We recognize that print deadlines may have passed, but steps should have been taken so that this terrible event was not made to appear less relevant than the primary story on page 2 about the “Nasal Ranger,” a machine that detects smells.

Additionally, we would have expected The Post and other media to reach out to local clergy and community leaders in the immediate aftermath of the hostage-taking to report on the impact to our local community. When they failed to do so, the Jewish community felt isolated and vulnerable. The lack of attention to such a shocking event serves to normalize antisemitism.

To counter this normalization, ADL, JEWISHcolorado and the Rocky Mountain Rabbis and Cantors hosted a virtual forum Tuesday night for an interfaith response to antisemitism. 

More than 8,500 separate screens tuned into the online program to see government officials including Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen, and Reps. Dafna Michaelson Jenet and Iman Jodeh, as well as clergy and leaders from the Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, African American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities, proclaim that antisemitism and hate are unacceptable. The fact that so many people watched the program demonstrated the very real need our community had to receive the heartfelt support of others.

As the leaders of two of the largest Jewish advocacy organizations and the largest synagogue in Colorado, we fear that violence is never far behind the normalization of antisemitism. We ask everyone, including The Denver Post, to do a better job of timely speaking out against antisemitic events when they occur.

Scott Levin is a regional director at the Anti-Defamation League. Rabbi Joseph R. Black is the senior rabbi at Temple Emanuel, and Rabbi Jay Strear is the CEO of JEWISHcolorado.

*Since Rabbi Charlie arrived at Congregation Beth Israel, in Colleyville, Texas, he has worked to bring a sense of spirituality, compassion, and learning into the lives of our community. He loves finding a connection with people of every age

Palm Beach warning - pay attention to public health advice

Two echo opinion letters published in The Palm Beach Post call for citizens to pay attention to public health advice, wash hands and practice social distancing, especially in public places. Meanwhile, the number of mobidity and mortality continues to increase and, unfortunately, will not be accurately counted because the numbers are under reported, as disclosed in The New York Times.

This photo was published in The Intercept

Amy Harmon in The New York Times reported "Coroners in some parts of the country are overwhelmed. Funeral homes in coronavirus hot spots can barely keep up. Newspaper obituary pages in hard-hit areas go on and on. Covid-19 is on track to kill far more people in the United States this year than the seasonal flu."

United States will be responsible for one out or three world deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, the United states population is 4.3 percent of the world's total number of people but the incidence of coronavirus is 28 percent of the pandemic victims.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coronavirus-death-toll-total.html
Total deaths in seven states that have been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic are nearly 50 percent higher than normal for the five weeks from March 8 through April 11, according to new death statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is 9,000 more deaths than were reported as of April 11 in official counts of deaths from the coronavirus.

Dr. Frank Lansville, medical director of the emergency department, sits in the E.R. of the Medical Center of Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Extra precautions and measures are being taken by healthcare professionals to protect against the spread of coronavirus within the hospital. (Published in The Denver Post.)

The new data is partial and most likely undercounts the recent death toll significantly. But it still illustrates how the coronavirus is causing a surge in deaths in the places it has struck... 

In The Palm Beach Post, the Florida newspaper published these two opinion letters:

(Wrong minded....) younger people talk about how they aren’t afraid to get the novel coronavirus; that more people should be brave like they are so we can get the economy back up and running. Your odds of dying are way lower than in a war, someone told me, so have the courage to face the enemy and we’ll get back to normal again much faster.

These people have it all wrong. They think they’re acting like brave warriors when they go out in public without a mask, or downplay social distancing in some other way, but instead they should see themselves as rats during the plague.

When the “brave soldiers” get infected, before they even know they have the virus they become a carrier, a vector for spreading disease and endanger everyone they come into contact with — maybe even people they’ve never met — by leaving the virus on some surface they later touch.

If they want to show their courage: Brave social distancing, brave having to wear a mask, brave the depression economy we will have to live through. That way someone’s grandparents will live to see another day.  From Chris Ely, in West Palm Beach

And this....

Jupiter (Florida) restaurant goers need to practice social distancing

When picking up takeout food at a popular Harbourside restaurant in Jupiter late last week, I was surprised and saddened to see dozens of young men and women standing in the small outdoor portion of the restaurant drinking face-to-face. They were not abiding by the suggested social-distancing or wearing masks. Many were young mothers with their young children.

Not only were they endangering each other, they displayed little or no concerns for the restaurant employees and customers picking up takeout orders.

These people obviously do not believe what they hear or see about the COVID19 pandemic.  From Steve Leber, in Jupiter Florida.

Donald Trump didn't want to end corruption during the Ukraine call. He doesn't care about corruption , just as long as he benefits from contributing to it.!

Echo editorial opinion from the The Denver Post in Colorado.

Editorial: Trump’s unethical push for a Ukrainian investigation into his political rival must be condemned

Donald Trump, acting as potus, should not be pressuring a foreign leader to investigate one of his 2020, political rivals. Such unethical behavior undermines American foreign policy efforts and jeopardizes the integrity of our elections.

That is a point, upon which, we would hope members of both political parties in the United States could agree.

Every member of the U.S. Senate — including Colorado’s Republican Senator Cory Gardner who called reports of Trump’s actions “concerning”— voted to support the release of a full whistleblower complaint. They, like us, think the accusation that Trump abused the power of his office for political gain is something that should be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly.

Other Republicans, including members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, have sprung to Trump’s defense, arguing the president was only trying to root out corruption (!- to Maine Writer, this "corruption" concept is an oxymoron when it applies to Donald Trump. Where are his hidden tax returns?) in Ukraine and get to the bottom of unsubstantiated rumors that the country was involved in the 2016, hacking of the Democratic Party’s servers. 

After having read the summary transcript of a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, we don’t think that’s an accurate description of the exchange.

“The democrats and the media, frankly, have attacked this president to such an extent that it has caused a certain callousness in the public and a certain cynicism in public towards revelations,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colorado, told the Denver Post editorial board on Thursday. “I don’t think this rises to an impeachable offense. I don’t think this is necessarily even wrong. Could it have been handled better? Sure, but it is not something that I think is suggesting that this president is trying to interfere in an ongoing criminal investigation or is trying to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.” (Maine Writer- This is the classic apologist point of view!)

Senator Cory Gardner

Buck signed on to an op-ed with other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee defending Trump. Colorado Reps. Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton also said they haven’t seen any evidence that the president did anything wrong.

To be clear, we’re not saying definitively that Trump has committed an impeachable offense; there’s an official process that will consider whether the whistleblower complaint is substantiated and if it rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” 

But, what we are saying is that we expect (a lot!) more of our president than the conversation he had with Zelensky. It was wrong. Viewed collectively with Trump’s order to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Ukraine’s war against Russia days before the phone call, it raises a specter of impropriety that goes beyond mere trifling matters. 

There is also the fact that Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani was having conversations with Zelensky’s staff outside of the Trump administration.

As the U.S. tries to promote a free and open democracy in Ukraine and support the country’s stand against the Russian annexation of Crimea, Trump made clear to Zelensky that his top priorities were, in fact, personal.

According to a not-verbatim transcript produced by intelligence officials who routinely listen to the phone calls presidents have with foreign officials, Trump asked Zelensky for a “favor:” investigate Crowdstrike, an American company that the New York Times reported helped make the forensic determination that it was Russian officials who hacked the Democratic National Committees servers in 2016 and released a trove of emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Then Trump said something along these lines: “The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

This was not Trump asking Zelensky to root out corruption in his country. This was Trump asking Zelensky to investigate the frontrunning Democrat in the presidential primary.

Biden had taken a leading role in Ukraine in 2015. However, at the same time, his son Hunter Biden was sitting on the board of one of the largest companies in Ukraine. The United Kingdom had frozen millions of dollars in assets from the company, but the head prosecutor in Ukraine refused to hand over documentation that could have assisted in the investigation. No charges were brought and the assets were unfrozen.

Biden has bragged about how he used foreign aid to pressure the government to fire that prosecutor and bring in another who would be less friendly to corruption. That certainly sounds like Biden was on the right side, but we also think it’s clear given that Biden should have forced his son to leave the board or recused himself from the foreign policy efforts in Ukraine. However, there’s no equivalent to that impropriety and Trump’s blatant self-serving requests.

Whether or not Trump is impeached and whether or not he wins in 2020, Congress must say loud and clear — including Colorado’s congressional members — that his efforts to entangle foreign countries in our election will not be tolerated. The Americans and the world deserve better from the president of the United States.

BUT! As if #sharpiegate were not "bad enough"!....now this: North Carolina stupidity

Echo! Published in The Denver Post, I read this opinion after the stupid #Sharpiegate incident was plastered all over the world's media. Donald Trump violated the tenets for supporting the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast that predicted hurricane Dorian's path, while the devastating storm skipped up the US east coast. 

He warned people living in Alabama about the storm, but (!) it was never predicted to affect that state. So, the #sharpiegate fiasco happened after this opinion essay was published, and before Trump's deliberately stupid and illegal weather blunder.

Blake echo: Donald Trump’s transparent and petty pre-hurricane politicking

He said whaaaa?  "Thank you, Mr. President"?  Senator Thom Tillis, R-NC #SIASD (Thank you for what? For being stupid!)

DENVER POST- On the list of Donald Trump’s political sins, wrongly crediting a GOP ally for getting him to declare a pre-hurricane Dorian federal emergency in North Carolina doesn’t rank particularly high.

But!

This is a remarkably transparent political gambit even for Trump, to whom so little is holy, coming as it does on the eve of a natural disaster that has threatened the southeastern United States and devastated the Bahamas.

On Tuesday night September 3, Trump credited Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., for his decision to declare a federal emergency in the state ahead of Hurricane Dorian’s arrival. “At the request of Senator Thom Tillis, I am getting the North Carolina Emergency Declaration completed and signed tonight,” Trump tweeted. “Hope you won’t need it!”

The first problem with that is that senators don’t formally request states of emergency. Under federal law, that’s left to governors.

In North Carolina’s case, that governor is Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Cooper declared a state emergency Friday and formally requested the federal one Monday. Trump didn’t mention him in the tweet.

The second problem is that it’s clear that this was political payback, and there’s virtually nothing subtle about it. Tillis, as Wagner notes, is up for reelection in 2020, and he faces a difficult general-election contest and a well-funded primary foe, businessman Garland Tucker. He appears to have earned plenty of goodwill from Trump after his flip-flop on Trump’s border-wall national emergency, which he eventually supported after writing a Washington Post commentary against it.

And Tillis was clearly angling for some credit here, repeatedly tweeting about his talks with Trump about the federal emergency.

“Just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump,” Tillis tweeted Monday evening, saying Trump would be issuing the federal emergency. “Just spoke with President @realDonaldTrump again & he said an emergency declaration for NC would be made later tonight,” he tweeted Tuesday. When Trump tweeted his credit to Tillis, the senator retweeted it without correcting Trump or mentioning Cooper’s role.

“Thank you, Mr. President!” he said.

Fine. Tillis can certainly play a role in that process, too — even if he doesn’t formally make the request. 

And there’s nothing wrong with letting people you work for know you’re engaged and talking to the president.

But !

Even if we set aside all of that: Was Trump really not going to declare a federal emergency in one of two states that are most directly in Dorian’s path, along with South Carolina? 

That state had already gotten one, as had Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which appear to have escaped the worst effects of the hurricane. As you can see from this long list of hurricane-related federal emergency declarations, this is a matter of course. Many recent declarations were for storms whose names you’ve probably already forgotten.

Whether someone is politicizing a natural disaster is difficult to pin down; one person’s politicization is another’s raising of an important issue. Republicans accuse Democrats of politicizing hurricanes by citing climate change, for example, when Democrats and climate scientists think that’s pretty important.

Orange man Trumpzi stupidity!

But! Even accounting for that subjectivity, Trump’s pre-hurricane gambits have been pretty obvious.

There was the time he pardoned Joe Arpaio, a former sheriff in Arizona, as Hurricane Harvey was hitting Texas — and acknowledged that he did so with the hurricane in mind. “A lot of people think it was the right thing to do,” Trump said. “Actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they were normally.”There was the time he lodged a conspiracy theory that Democrats had inflated the Hurricane Maria death toll in Puerto Rico . . . less than 24 hours before Hurricane Florence was set to hit the Carolinas. (Even Florida Republicans disowned that Trump theory.)

Just last week, Trump called Puerto Rico corrupt and wrongly inflated the amount of Maria-related aid the U.S. territory received, even as it faced another blow from Dorian.

And before he was president, Trump previewed Hurricane Sandy in 2012 by arguing that President Barack Obama would use it to his advantage for his reelection bid.

“Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars,” Trump tweeted.

Trump even used the occasion to extend the deadline for his offer of $5 million for Obama’s birth certificate.

“Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama’s favorite charity until 12PM on Thursday,” Trump said.  (Cruel, OMG!)

It has become pretty clear what’s on Trump’s mind when a hurricane is about to hit.

Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.

Tariffs are Donald Trump taxes on American citizens

Where are the free trade Republicans?

An echo opinion letter published in the Denver Post:

Tariffs! A new JP Morgan analysis predicts that the average American family will shoulder $1,000 per year, as a result of Donald Trump’s tariffs with China and the failed (stupid) trade war. 

These are taxes that our so-called lowering-taxes Republicans, including Sen. Cory Gardner, appear to ignore. They do no help to us, and it appears that rural Coloradans — especially our hardworking farmers and ranchers — will be hurt the most.

Apparently, China tariffs already in place are expected to cost the average household $600, per year!  Really, the only ones who have benefited from the huge reduction of taxes and the huge increase of the deficit are the rich, such as Trump himself and corporations. And it appears that Trump and Gardner’s answer to reduce the deficit is to take food assistance (food stamps) away from 90,000, people in Colorado, including about 11,000 children. Trump and Gardner are not working to help Colorado, except for the rich.

Wayne Wathen, Highlands Ranch, Colorado

Colorado- a person who has diabetes will receive life saving insulin thru insurance plans

https://www.denverpost.com/2019/05/23/colorado-insulin-price-cap/

Echo report published in The Denver Post by Anna Staver

Colorado becomes first state in nation to cap price of insulin
Under bill signed by governor this week, diabetics will pay no more than $100 a month for insulin. PLUS- a directive to find out why the cost of insulin has increased so rapidly.

Diabetics in Colorado who use insulin to control their blood sugar levels won’t pay more than $100 per month for the drug starting in January thanks to a bill signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday.

“Today, we will declare that the days of insulin price gouging are over in Colorado,” Polis said in his office as he signed the bill, according to CBS Denver.

Insulin has been around for nearly a century, but the price that patients with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes pay for the drug has doubled since 2012, according to the Healthcare Cost Institute. 

The cost of insulin can creep up toward $1,000 for those whose health care coverage requires significant cost-sharing.

The sudden spike in insulin prices lead to congressional inquiries and public outrage, but Colorado is the first state to implement a cap on what its residents can be charged for the medication. The law doesn’t limit what insulin manufacturers can charge insurance companies, and it’s expected those insurers will pay the difference.

Rep. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, told The Denver Post earlier this year that the projections he saw showed the price of health care plans increasing by “a couple of cents, per person, per month.”

The new law also requires Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate why drug manufacturers started rapidly raising the price of insulin in recent years, and it tasks the Department of Law with issuing a report of his findings by November 2020.

Syrian suffering and non existant "red lines" ~ echo opinion from Denver CO

An echo opinion letter published in The Denver Post. 

Failure of the international "red line" Syrian policy: Syrians are dying in this diplomatic debacle

Sadly, the Red Line drawn, by seemingly governments with good intentions, were to protect Syrians from mass murder by the Bashar al-Assad's power debacle. Obviously, the proverbial "red line"  faded to the point where the references to this challenge are now euphemisms for failure.

When a red line is drawn, there's no point of return. 

A red line is a hard limit between what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. When the entire world seemed to, presumably, drew a red line on the Syrian regime five years ago, they failed the Syrian people miserably. 

In fact, to this very day, the red line has become a point of no return for thousands of innocent civilians who are horribly suffering and dying because there never was a red line. 

Now, it has happened again — this time after Donald Trump announced last week that the U.S. military would be leaving Syria in the next six months. 

How much longer can the world sit on the sidelines?

Ann Moore, Centennial