a blog by Jack Limpert, Editor of The Washingtonian for more than 40 years.
From a New York Times guest essay by Linda Greenhouse headlined “The Latest Crusade to Place Religion Over the Rest of Civil Society”:
Federal civil rights law requires employers to accommodate their employees’ religious needs unless the request would impose “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.” Congress didn’t bother to define “undue hardship,” so 46 years ago the Supreme Court came up with a definition of its own.
From a Wall Street Journal story by Corinne Ramey headlined “Manhattan District Attorney to Present Trump Hush-Money Evidence to Grand Jury”:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office is moving to present evidence to a grand jury about hush money Donald Trump allegedly steered to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, according to people familiar with the matter, raising the prospect the former president could face criminal charges in New York.
The hush-money investigation began under the prior administration of Cyrus Vance Jr. but went largely dormant before the current district attorney, Alvin Bragg, took office. It gained steam under Mr. Bragg recently after Mr. Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, was convicted of criminal tax fraud and other offenses late last year.
From a Los Angeles Times story by Stephen Battaglio “CNN’s Chris Licht on restoring trust and why he deleted his Twitter account”:
Slumping ratings, cost-cutting, show cancellations and — comedy?
The path of CNN has been a bit rocky since it became part of Warner Bros. Discovery last year and the parent company’s chief executive, David Zaslav, picked veteran news and late-night TV producer Chris Licht to run the network that created the cable news business nearly 43 years ago.
From a Washington Post column by Leonard Downie Jr. headlined “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust”:
Amid all the profound challenges and changes roiling the American news media today, newsrooms are debating whether traditional objectivity should still be the standard for news reporting. “Objectivity” is defined by most dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice. Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing.
From a New York Times story by Alyson Krueger headlined “How These Dog Walkers Make Over $100,000 a Year”:
Dressed in black leggings and a puffer jacket, Bethany Lane, 35, was walking down Bleecker Street in Manhattan last Friday afternoon with a pack of three goldendoodles and one bernedoodle named Tinkerbelle. They poked their noses into the Whalebone store to collect some treats, before trotting along the Hudson River Park and having their photos taken by several tourists.
From a Washington Post story by Karla Adam headlined “Putin threatened to kill me, Britain’s Boris Johnson says”:
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson says Russian President Vladimir Putin personally threatened him with a missile attack in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a claim quickly denied by the Kremlin.
The accusation came in excerpts of a BBC documentary on Putin and the West set to air later Monday, and Johnson conceded that the Russian leader might have been joking.
From a Wall Street Journal commentary by Peter Funt headlined “Sadness and Static as AM Stations Fade”:
When I lived in Denver in the early 1970s, Sunday nights included an audio excursion to my hometown of New York—a trip only AM radio could provide. At 770 on the dial I listened to WABC, with its distinctive disc jockeys, rock music and “news at :25 and :55,” via a signal traveling more than 1,600 miles.
This magic was possible only for a few hours when station KOB in Albuquerque, N.M., which shared the 770 frequency, shut down for maintenance. With the competing signal out of the way, WABC’s sound was able to travel far west—literally bouncing off the ionosphere.
From a conversation between New York Times columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens headlined “America Is Breaking Our Hearts”
Gail Collins: Bret, I have a lot to ask you about government spending and deficits and … all that stuff. But first, we really need to talk about all the recent mass shootings and what to do about them, right?
Bret Stephens: In Britain or Germany these sorts of mass shootings are, at most, once-every-other-year events. Over here, hardly a day goes by without something like this happening. And the horror doesn’t just lie in the carnage. It’s that we’ve become accustomed to it. Dostoyevsky wrote, “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” That’s the state of our nation.
From a story on politico.com by Eva Hartog headlined “In divided Russia, ‘compassion has become civil resistance'”:
MOSCOW — Malika sobbed as she laid flowers at the foot of a statue of a Ukrainian poet in the center of the Russian capital.
In addition to her sorrow — the act was a commemoration of the victims of a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro — she had two reasons to also feel unease.
From a Washington Post obit by Brian Murphy headlined “Gregory Allen Howard, screenwriter of ‘Remember the Titans,’ dies at 70”:
Gregory Allen Howard, a screenwriter who recounted stories of perseverance such as the football and racial drama “Remember the Titans” and the biopic “Harriet” on the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, died in Miami.
Mr. Howard had story credits on films and series exploring Black struggles and successes, including “Ali” (2001) on the life of boxer Muhammad Ali starring Will Smith and Jamie Foxx. Mr. Howard also taught a screenwriting course at Howard University as a visiting professor.
