Opinion

Sometimes the tragedies just seem to rain from the sky.

PRESS: Mr. President, after having slogged through wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, all at one point going on simultaneously, can we really afford to militarily engage with yet another enemy?

Despite the heavy rain on March 16, a large, enthusiastic crowd turned out at Gilroy’s St. Mary Roman Catholic Church. They were there to hear a remarkable man share a story of great relevance to the gang violence so common in South County.

Two people meet under odd circumstances and in a situation where yesterday becomes today in a funny, bittersweet story developed by playwright Carly Mensch, best known for her contribution to the HBO series “Weeds.”

One of my pet peeves is how people often call forth the condemnation of the Founding Fathers upon modern-day America, as if the men who founded our nation were demigods, filled with a divine moral soundness and evangelical wisdom formed by the deeply puritanical society of colonial times. The leaders who shaped our nation’s path would shrink in shock at our modern political idolatry. They would insist we take them out of the temple of worship and instead see them as human beings, as people with flaws and prejudices shaped by the culture of their time.

As time goes by and initiative petition circulators buttonhole more and more Californians outside big box stores and shopping malls, it becomes increasingly obvious that all three state tax increase initiatives now in the works cannot pass.