

Upon his death in 1547, she was named third in the line of succession, eligible to rule only in the unlikely event that her siblings, Edward VI and Mary I, died without heirs. Bastardized following the 1536 execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn, she spent her childhood at the mercy of the changing whims of her father, Henry VIII. Unlike her Scottish counterpart, whose position as the only legitimate child of James V cemented her royal status, Elizabeth followed a protracted path to the throne.
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Wed to the dauphin in April 1558, 16-year-old Mary-already so renowned for her beauty that she was deemed “ la plus parfaite,” or the most perfect-ascended to the French throne the following July, officially asserting her influence beyond her home country to the European continent.Īs Mary donned dual crowns, the new English queen, her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, consolidated power on the other side of the Channel.

Her height emphasized Mary’s seemingly innate queenship: Enthroned as Scotland’s ruler at just six days old, she spent her formative years at the French court, where she was raised alongside future husband Francis II. Not only was she a female monarch in an era dominated by men, she was also physically imposing, standing nearly six feet tall. The solution is the We the People Amendment, which would correct these fundamental errors.Mary, Queen of Scots, towered over her contemporaries in more ways than one.

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The Supreme Court has handed our democracy to corporations in a series of constitutional contortions, turning money into free speech and corporations into people. Perhaps President Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Manchin thought, “Politics as usual,” but I see outright corruption. They set it up that way, and it’s blatantly unethical. One could argue that those who voted “yea” simultaneously honored and broke their oaths of office. The Mountain Valley Pipeline favored by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia would cross more than 400 waterways. This flouts the expertise we’ve developed over many years of carefully approving such projects while protecting waterways and ecosystems. The effrontery of members of Congress and the president to blatantly conspire with fossil fuel interests to attach a reckless pipeline approval to a bill to simply pay national debts and avoid crashing the global economy and wrecking the personal security of millions of people. The writer, a retired pediatrician, is Massachusetts group coleader with .Īpproval of pipeline through Appalachia is blatant corruption When will our political leadership develop both a backbone and a sense of compassion? The deal in Washington has made pawns of the impoverished at the expense of the billionaires. The recent debt ceiling negotiation has made many needy people more likely to fall through not cracks but holes in our safety net. We must acknowledge that our country ranks among the lowest in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development for child poverty. It also lowered child poverty by 46 percent almost immediately, only to be reversed one month after the enhanced CTC was discontinued. The accommodations made during the COVID-19 pandemic - including prevention of evictions an enhanced, fully refundable child tax credit and greater benefits under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - decreased the number of those in poverty and the reliance on food pantries and other more temporary solutions.
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We know how to improve the situation since we’ve done it before. Two recent articles - “The need continues” by Diti Kohli (Business, May 31) and “Low-income people fear high-cost change” by Kohli and Katie Johnston (Page A1, June 3) - make the case that the plight of the most impoverished must be urgently addressed.

Safety net hasn’t just been frayed - it’s been torn asunder
