General
The Other Big Lawsuit
A legislator once told me how he traded political favors for campaign contributions: He said, It’s legal but you have to walk a line. He explained when someone asked him to vote for a bill he couldn’t say, ‘Sure, I will, if you’ll contribute to my campaign in return.’ That was a ‘quid pro quo.’…
Read MoreLawsuits Galore…
Jack Smith’s lawsuit against Trump goes like this: 1) States counted votes, certified the winner; 2) Picked Presidential Electors; 3) Biden won the Electoral College; 4) On January 6 Trump tried to throw out Biden’s Electors so he could stay in power – that broke the law. Trump’s defense goes this way: 1) Biden didn’t…
Read MoreEchoing Neville Chamberlain
Back during the Cold War, veterans who’d fought in World War II watched Vietnam, Cuba, countries in Africa, Asia, Central America fall to the Soviet Union; determined to stop Russia, conservatives, like Ronald Reagan, said three words: ‘Peace through strength’ – liberals answered: ‘Détente.’ It looks like we’re heading into a new Cold War with…
Read MoreHot Political News
Trump tweeted out a picture of Christie and Obama, said Christie helped sink Romney; Christie tweeted out a eighteen year old photo of Trump and Hillary, shot back he didn’t invite Hillary to his wedding. A GOP Congressman ripped the Biden Administration for hiding UFOs. Biden’s dog bit his Secret Service agents ten times, one…
Read MoreFree Speech Under Attack – Again
Sixty years later, history has hit “repeat” on the fight for free speech at North Carolina’s public universities. In 1963, it was one bill – the infamous Speaker Ban law – passed on one day at the end of the legislative session. Now, it’s bill after bill, step after step, day after day: the legislature,…
Read MoreEyes on Russia
While we were obsessing over billionaires at the bottom of the ocean, a civil war broke out in Russia. In 1917, civil war in Russia led to the fall of the Tsar and the rise of communism and the Soviet Union. In 1991, armed conflict in Moscow led to the breakup of the Soviet Union,…
Read MoreForgotten Stories from our Past: Churchill Didn’t say a Word
Descending a flight of stairs wearing a pair of Italian high heels, Winston Churchill’s sixty-seven-year-old mother fell, broke her ankle, gangrene set in, her leg was amputated above the knee, a vein in her thigh hemorrhaged, she died. Two months later Churchill’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Marigold, throat infected, inflamed with tonsilitis, sighed, ‘So tired, so tired’…
Read MoreRevisiting Evil
Since our Danube cruise, my thoughts keep going back to three Holocaust memorials – and the line between good and evil in people. In Budapest, we saw the “Shoes on the Danube Bank,” (pictured) a memorial to 20,000 Jews who were rounded up and executed beside the river in 1944-45. They were ordered to take…
Read MoreForgotten Stories from our Past: Franklin Roosevelt’s Prayer
After twenty-four hours in labor his mother was given an overdose of chloroform – Franklin Roosevelt was born blue, limp, lifeless. A doctor gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Prey to illness as a child, he suffered diseases throughout his life. He married a shy awkward girl, his cousin Eleanor, who saw sex “an ordeal devoid of…
Read MoreThe Danube isn’t Blue
Strauss’ waltz notwithstanding, the Danube River is brown. Its powerful current flows 1,770 miles from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania, through 10 countries, past four national capitals and through 1,500 years of history. Gwyn and I took an eight-day cruise upriver from Budapest to Bratislava, Vienna, Krems, the Wachau…
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