You have to look for the schism, Jasper said to himself out at the woodpile. He put another chunk of firewood up on the splitting block and took a look at the checking cracks that ran part way through the circles of age rings. If I hit it right there, he said to himself, it […]

Forget your high school civics class, the one where they taught you how laws are made. It wasn’t true. Here’s the truth. Congress sometimes manages to pass broad laws, leaving it up to the experts — regulators or administrators — to fill in the details that apply to people.  While rulemaking, they’re under heavy pressure […]

A recent column I wrote on communism in Hollywood in the 1940s elicited strong reaction toward the person of Joe McCarthy. This was somewhat perplexing, given that McCarthy was not the front-and-center figure investigating Hollywood communism. Yet, it wasn’t surprising, given that any mention of the Stalinist sympathies of American communists prompts liberals into reflexive accusations of […]

It’s never a good idea to believe in the goodness or infallibility of any human being, let alone one preoccupied with achieving or maintaining power or national prominence. I thought John Edwards was a fine and decent man who would make a great president. Apparently I was mistaken. But that’s not the only thing I’ve […]

When Jim Kennedy uses his big backhoe, a crowd usually gathers. He’s an artist, you see. At Bud McFarland’s place the other day, he was there to install Bud’s new septic tank. This was to be a massive septic tank.  Now and then Jim would just do something to show off his skill. At one […]

With elections nearing, we do have choice. What, we wonder, can we do about it? What is there to do about a lack of funding for our public schools and education in general? Just looking at the federal level, despite an economy that is doing very well at the moment, Trump’s proposed 2019 education budgetchops it […]