Time to end the imposed ignorance of guns and the harm they do
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1121 words)
A revealing thing happened in the grief-filled days that followed the massacre of helpless children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Virtually every conversation about gun control, about any possible remedy for gun violence, hit a roadblock. We just didn't know a lot about the guns circulating in America. How many guns are in the U.S.? We don't have reliable ...

Jun/07/2013 03:35 PM

Mary Sanchez: A good-paying job is more effective than a lecture
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1205 words)
More and more mothers, whether they wear a wedding ring or not, are becoming their family's breadwinner. An analysis of 2011 U.S. Census data found that 40 percent of households rely on mom as the primary or sole breadwinner. That's a massive increase from 1960, when the figure was a mere 11 percent. This trend won't shock a lot of Americans. They already see it within their own homes or those ...

May/31/2013 11:28 AM

When will military get serious about reforming its culture of sexual hostility?
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1133 words)
Apparently, May was Harass Your Female Subordinates Month in the U.S. military. I didn't get the press release, but a number of news items brought me up to speed. A sergeant at West Point is being investigated for secretly videotaping at least a dozen female cadets at West Point while they showered or were in the bathroom undressing. The Army didn't announce the investigation; it was leaked to ...

May/24/2013 02:54 PM

Mary Sanchez: Responsibility for Asian sweatshop safety lies with us, too
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1081 words)
Another apparel factory has collapsed in a poor Asian country, killing three workers, and I fear I'm partly to blame. The evidence of my complicity sits idle on the landing, next to a tennis racquet. Asics shoes. My adored new pair, so light, makes it so easy to move around the tennis court. Just last night, I urged another player to try a pair. It's unclear at this writing whether my ...

May/17/2013 11:23 AM

Mary Sanchez: Conservatism needs to purge eugenics obsession
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN-1ST-LEDE:KC (1298 words)
Jason Richwine is a type in American politics. He holds a doctorate from Harvard. He writes studies, appears at conservative conferences in suit and tie, and expounds the same old nonsense about immigrants that we've been hearing since the Know Nothings had their last hurrah. Sure, his work is perfumed with the air of scholarly respectability, but his eugenics-based beliefs bear more than a ...

May/10/2013 05:56 PM

Mary Sanchez: Selling guns to kids, legally: Only in America!
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1182 words)
She stepped out onto the front porch, poured grease out of a frying pan for the dogs and "heard the gun go off." That line, from an Associated Press story, captures the horror a young mother in Kentucky will live with forever, the moment her 5-year-old son accidentally shot her 2-year-old daughter with a .22 caliber rifle. The boy had been playing with the gun- his own weapon, unbelievably - ...

May/03/2013 11:50 AM

Mary Sanchez: Hiding records doesn't help abused children
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (576 words)
Last summer, Kansas Citians were horrified when a little girl was found starving, locked in a closet, barely surviving amid her own feces. The 10-year-old had lived that way for quite some time. Her weight had dropped to a mere 32 pounds. The number one question then was, "How could such a tragedy happen?" We still don't know. And it's becoming increasing suspicious why the information has ...

Apr/26/2013 08:01 AM

Mary Sanchez: Wasn't Sandy Hook enough?
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1012 words)
Is a modern day Emmett Till necessary to upend America's state of denial about gun violence? For those who go looking, there are detailed verbal accounts of the carnage that happened behind the walls of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Of the gore created by Adam Lanza's weapons. Most of us don't want to know what his Bushmaster's bullets did to the bodies of those children and teachers. It's ...

Apr/19/2013 01:51 PM

Mary Sanchez: What should we learn from case of Philadelphia abortion mill?
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1137 words)
Abortion mill. If you spend any amount of time listening to anti-abortion activists or reading their literature, you've heard this epithet, which they apply to any clinic that performs abortions. A "mill," in this usage, is the very opposite of a clinic. It is dark and satanic place, where bodies are mangled and other horrors are committed against human life and dignity. If you're the sort of ...

Apr/12/2013 04:06 PM

Mary Sanchez: School is a battlefield, and NRA determined to keep it that way
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Mary Sanchez
BC-SANCHEZ-COLUMN:KC (1104 words)
Good guys vs. bad guys, both sides armed to the teeth. That's how the National Rifle Association views the moral universe. Yes, the group admits, an epidemic of gun violence is plaguing our nation. The reason for it is that good people have disarmed themselves. The cure is for them - us - to rearm. In fact, most Americans don't want to be more awash in firepower, as is revealed in poll after ...

Apr/08/2013 12:07 PM