Everyone thinks they can predict what the coming year will bring. Political commentators, sports broadcasters, financial executives and quasi-literate YouTube stars are all doling out their prognostications: “The stock market will nosedive!” “Tom Brady will be the MVP!” “Centaurs from Galaxy X will invade Earth and use our chimneys for pooping!” Since few so-called experts […]

America is not a police state. This is not a country in which the arm of justice is empowered to pursue arbitrary and selfish goals. Instead, America is a land of laws that restrict harm, damage, selfishness, and the arbitrary use of force by police as well as citizens. Power in America is not absolute […]

Virtue. Character. Integrity. Words that cultures around the world and through history have described as the aspirational qualities to earn and strive for in our lives. 2017 was as tumultuous a year as 2016, as the rocky social discourse we now live in seemingly continues to intensify. Yet to me, the most noticeable new development […]

Editor, Re:  Mr. Weil’s column in the Saturday, Dec. 29 newspaper, there are a few certainties to be found in this column: • Gordon Weil often omits or distorts facts to suit his agenda (e.g. no mention in today’s column of the Democrats refusing Trump’s repeated offers during 2018 to “grant amnesty” to DACA and […]

The sunlight came in through the shades, shaking me from my dream. But as a 6-year-old, that just meant Saturday morning cartoons. I sprang up and dashed to the living room. As I turned on the television, there he was — a blue-and-red blur flying across the screen. Soon after, the iconic “S” came into focus: […]

When we think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s great speeches, we don’t think of Berlin. And when we think of great American speeches in Berlin, we think of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan; we don’t think of King. Yet, 50 years ago, the civil rights icon delivered historic remarks on both sides of the Berlin […]

As the year turns, there are some things I haven’t been able to understand. I figure I’m like most people. Why doesn’t President Trump get it? His popularity is in the steepest free-fall of any president, yet he keeps promising policies most people don’t want and whose implications for America’s role in the world and […]

The biggest losers from the GOP tax plan will be the 87 million middle-class families facing higher taxes, plus the 13 million people who would lose their healthcare. The biggest winners? Millionaires and corporations, of course. Chief among those corporations: America’s top drug makers. Pharmaceutical firms will get tens of billions of dollars in tax […]

Religious deception and hucksterism is certainly not a new phenomenon. From Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry to televangelist Jim Bakker to some proponents of the Prosperity Gospel, fictional and real life examples abound. So the revelation that Kevin Malarkey fabricated his six-year old son’s account of his near-death experience (NDE) in “The Boy Who Came Back […]