A recent look at the GOP’s platform on immigration was quite heartbreaking; they want to break up and damage good families. I thought about the people I know, mothers and fathers who’d be deported—if Donald Trump gets his way—and dozens of kids left behind. I took a deeper look at what he’d like to do […]

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 […]

“Where you stand depends on where you sit.” Rufus Miles, a federal official, created this contribution to American political folklore.  Because each party’s members in the House and Senate sit together, they usually vote together.  He suggested they should be mixed together to promote compromise. Of course, his proposal was not adopted.  But his point […]

This story has a good ending — or, I should say, a promising beginning. I just bought my ticket to Minneapolis to go visit Robel* whom I first met last October while doing visitations at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Originally from the Horn of Africa, * Robel (not his real name) had been […]

Student unrest in many colleges last spring demonstrated what is becoming obvious; institutions of higher learning are becoming radicalized and project intolerance for anything but a liberal view. Too few permit conservative or libertarian speakers and far fewer a constitutional speaker. I was not surprised, some years ago, to hear a mother share with me […]

If you are a football fan, and perhaps even if you are not, you have read the allegation that current Ohio State head football coach, Urban Meyer, and athletic director, Gene Smith, knowingly employed an assistant coach, Zach Smith, who was battering his now ex-wife, Courtney Smith. The story continues to unfold as new information […]

The public square has been alight in recent days as controversy has brewed over The New York Times’ hiring of Harvard Law-educated Sarah Jeong and her history of questionable Tweets. Based on Twitter’s publicly available information, since joining the platform in June 2009 she has sent out over 103,000 Tweets. It seems many dozens of those have […]

When I finished my graduate study and moved out of Buffalo, New York to take my first full-time professional job at the University of Missouri, I called my telephone company to discontinue my landline service. After being put on hold while the agent checked my account, I was shocked by the words I heard: “We […]

After signing into law massive tax cuts costing nearly $2 trillion that mostly benefit the wealthy and big corporations, President Trump wants to give the very rich another tax break — this time without approval from Congress. It would cost between $100 and $200 billion over 10 years. Both Trump (net worth: $3.7 billion) and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin (net […]

It began as a whispered threat, this latest storm of ours. There was something in the air, a cleansing tonic, a murmur of sharpness. The trees on the hills looked different, then, seeming to stand out in sharper focus, in cleaner profile. It was the magical paintbrush of a gentle sun brushing the front of […]