'Grief and condolences are not enough'

'The New York gunman blamed CTE. I've seen that pain and I know silence is deadly.'

RK Russell at The Guardian

The recent Manhattan shooting is a "warning about everything we still refuse to confront: how we treat brain trauma, how we ignore mental illness, how we arm the broken, and how silence" kills, says RK Russell. The shooter "didn't play in the NFL," but the "way he described his suffering in his final note, the way he named CTE, and the league, and begged for his brain to be studied: that language, that desperation, it's familiar."

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'A half-century after "Jaws," the truth is clear'

Lindsay L. Graff at The Washington Post

There are "few summer traditions more predictable than turning sharks into profit," says Lindsay L. Graff. Before "1975, sharks managed to lead inconspicuous existences that belied their ecological importance." Fear of "sharks wasn't born with 'Jaws,'" but "transforming sharks into predatory monsters leverages the primal unease humans experience when we're reminded of our natural place." In a "single summer, 'Jaws' distilled a subclass of hundreds of species, small and large, down to the singular, misleading moniker of 'man-eater.'"

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'Beware rationalizations for leaving universities the way they are'

Peter Berkowitz at the National Review

American "universities maintain closed-minded intellectual environments that encourage professors and students to espouse progressive orthodoxy and punish those who don't," says Peter Berkowitz. They "long ago departed from their core mission, which is to provide undergraduates a liberal education and to foster scholarship driven by the disinterested pursuit of the truth." Introducing "conservatives into faculty ranks would inject into the intellectual mix on campus questions that the progressive majority routinely ignores or suppresses."

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'Voters, please send Ken Paxton packing'

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

The "evidence is plain on any number of fronts" that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is "not worthy of his office, nor should he be held up as standard bearer of conservatism," says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. Only "those genuinely devoted to the suspension of belief in established facts can accept that all of this is a media-generated, leftist conspiracy to undo a conservative warrior." His "actions, personal and professional, are profoundly flawed."

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