10 of our top columns this week

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've started in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.

— USA TODAY Opinion editors

1. Texas blackouts warning to Biden and all of us: Renewables do play a role in grid problems

By Jason Hayes

"The immediate cause for the power outages in Texas this week was extreme cold and insufficient winterization of the state’s energy systems. But there’s still no escaping the fact that, for years, Texas regulators have favored the construction of heavily subsidized renewable energy sources over more reliable electricity generation. These policies have pushed the state away from nuclear and coal and now millions in Texas and the Great Plains states are learning just how badly exposed they are when extreme weather hits."

2. Our View: Riot at Capitol demands 9/11-style commission to study security failures

By The Editorial Board

"The three top security officials at the U.S. Capitol when insurrectional rioters breached the building Jan. 6, halting the counting of electoral ballots by Congress, have since come under intense criticism. And they didn't do anything to help themselves Tuesday during testimony before joint Senate committees investigating what went wrong. All three men — former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and former Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger — resigned or were asked to quit shortly after the riot."

The U.S. Capitol Police did not fail on Jan. 6: Former USCP chief

By Steven A. Sund testimony:

"The events on January 6, 2021, constituted the worst attack on law enforcement that I have seen in my entire career. This was an attack that we are learning was pre-planned, and involved participants from a number of states who came well equipped, coordinated, and prepared to carry out a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol. I witnessed insurgents beating police officers with fists, pipes, sticks, bats, metal barricades, and flag poles. These criminals came prepared for war."

3. A just monument to the Trump presidency: Bury the 500,000 COVID dead at Mar-a-Lago

By Jason Sattler

"How can we honor the more than half-million Americans who lost their lives to COVID-19 while marking former President Donald Trump’s shameless failure to “preserve, protect and defend” this country and its Constitution?  Easy. Let’s bury the dead at Mar-a-Lago."

4. Donald Trump and allies are rerunning the election Big Lie. They could incite violence again.

By Norm Eisen, Lizzie Ulmer and Katherine Reisner

"The 2020 election is long over, but the Big Lie that it was illegitimate appears to be on a comeback tour — with federal, state and local leaders, including ex-President Donald Trump, perpetuating this falsehood over the past week. This lie fueled the events of Jan. 6; as such we must treat its repetition as nothing short of an ongoing incitement. We must use criminal, civil and regulatory tools to quash it before there is another eruption of anti-democratic violence."

5. Vehement opposition to Deb Haaland ‘motivated by something other than her record’

By Mark Udall and Tom Udall

"After four years of unbalanced development of our public lands, President Joe Biden has nominated Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico to lead the Department of the Interior to restore its mission of conserving the country’s 'natural resources and cultural heritage for the benefit and enjoyment of the American people.' Haaland, through her life’s journey and her record in Congress, has shown that she understands we don’t inherit the earth from our parents — we borrow it from our children and the yet unborn. She knows the damage that unbalanced energy development can levy not only on our air, land and water, but also on the profound health and cultural costs that front-line and Native American communities are forced to endure."

6. My dad listened to Rush Limbaugh attack gay people like me, and echoed his contempt

By Hans Johnson

"My father started listening to Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s, about the time he retired as a scientist, while living in Cincinnati. I lived in Washington, D.C., working as a field organizer for national organizations that supported civil rights and sought to count and punish hate crimes against what we then called the gay community.  By coincidence, Cincinnati was a hot spot for efforts by religious conservative organizations to stop the movement for legal protections from discrimination for LGBT people and attacks fueled by bigotry, including hate crimes, against us. I had come out to my parents about four years earlier. I was selective in describing the risks or threats I experienced, including a taxi that once started to drive off with my then-boyfriend’s hand on the handle."

7.  Forget Giuliani and the impeachment crew. This is how a real Trump defense would look.

By Chuck Rosenberg

"If Trump is charged criminally in one of the jurisdictions in which he is under investigation, and goes to trial, he will not have the advantage of a predisposed jury. In a real trial, of course, the prosecution has the burden of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the jury would need to be unanimous to convict (or to acquit). That is properly a difficult burden. And a real defense by a real defense lawyer in a real courtroom is also more difficult. It would need to be cogent, thoughtful and purposeful — quite unlike the defense offered at Trump’s second impeachment proceeding."

8. COVID restrictions on religion: I'm still attending Mass from my church parking lot.

By Tim Busch

"I never thought I’d watch Mass from the front seat of my car. I never thought I’d receive Holy Communion standing in the parish parking lot. But there I’ve been, Sunday after Sunday for months on end, in the parking lot at St. Kilian Catholic Church in Mission Viejo, California."

9. 'I hate that we are here:' America grieves as 500,000 die from COVID-19 pandemic

By Suzette Hackney

"One year ago, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials warned that the coronavirus outbreak was heading toward pandemic status. In the weeks that followed, we scrambled to shut down businesses and close schools, believing we could slow the spread. Today, more than 500,000 Americans are dead."

10. Britney Spears documentary reveals what's wrong with the entertainment media

By Vanessa Díaz

"The celebrity-paparazzi relationship is far more nuanced than the film might lead viewers to believe, particularly in the case of Spears. While the film shows a tearful moment of Spears complaining about the paparazzi in a 2006 interview with Matt Lauer, Outside of the infamous umbrella scene featured in the film, Spears had a collaborative and genuinely friendly relationship with many photographers. 'When she didn’t know where she was going, she would tell us, and we would help her get where she needed to go,' one paparazzo told me. 'We essentially would create a motorcade for her to make sure she didn’t get lost. This is someone we saw daily and she knew us.'"