Earmarks are back and they’re costing American taxpayers a bundle. In case you’ve forgotten, earmarks, says FactCheck.org, “are government funds that are allocated by a legislator for a particular pet project, often without proper review.” Often attached to the 12 large appropriation bills that Congress by law is supposed to pass each year to fund […]

“Time Enough at Last.” The new year reminds me of that classic “Twilight Zone” episode starring Burgess Meredith as a put-upon bookworm. (No, he wasn’t reading on the wing of an airplane! Get your episodes straight, with “The Twilight Zone Companion,” for Pete’s sake!) True bibliophiles are all the same. Whether our preference is studying […]

Voters are, to understate their mood, disenchanted with Congress. Yet paradoxically, voters re-elect, over and over, the same representatives they hold in dismally low esteem, consider ineffectual and out-of-touch. On average for 2022, about 80 percent of polling respondents disapproved of how congressional representatives handled their jobs. Many critics had previously claimed that underrepresentation of […]

As a 10-year-old in 1953, I recall seeing newsreels at the movies, which showed the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It seemed like a big deal to millions of people, but my passions revolved around playing Little League baseball and cheering on my Cleveland Indians, not about the monarchy. Tina, by contrast, recalls that she […]