On January 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, twelve Republican lawmakers gathered in a private dining room of an exclusive Washington restaurant. The meeting lasted for four hours. Before they parted, each of the Senators and Representatives
Current Events
Secular Law Trumps Religious Law
“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” unless religion goes off a cliff. When that happens, secular law trumps religious law. History is full of examples
Abortion in America
During the 2009 health care debate, fundamentalist congressmen inserted language that eliminated public funding for abortions. They are now proposing legislation that would make it impossible for a woman to buy private insurance with her own money, if that insurance includes coverage for abortion
Hacker Republic: Fact or Fiction
When WikiLeak hackers took down MasterCharge, Visa, and PayPal after the arrest of Julian Assange, I thought of Stieg Larsson’s book, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” It’s a crime thriller. Fiction. Made up stuff, some would say. Yet the similarities between what happens in this last of the Millenium series and the headline-grabbing […]
Avandia Still on the Market: Shame on You, FDA
Three years ago I was on a shuttle bus headed into downtown London from Heathrow airport. I felt awful. When you’ve spent the night in a cramped seat on an overnight flight from the U.S., you’d kill for a few hours sleep. But you know you have to stay awake for the next 12 hours; […]
War on Drugs or War Against the Citizenry?
Dressed in camouflage and bristling with high-powered weapons, a police SWAT team, looking for illegal drugs, broke into an apartment in Columbia, Missouri. The family dog got up from his spot on the rug and began to bark. They shot him dead. While the man, his wife, and small son watched, the police shot a […]
Jury Duty
No one wants to serve on a jury. You especially do not want to serve if it’s a murder case. But that’s where I found myself last week, sitting on a jury in a criminal case against a man charged with eight felonies, one of them felony murder. By the time I was called, both […]
Pedophile Priests
Why, I wonder, have there been no acts of violence against the pedophile priests who have molested children? Why have the fathers of these children not gone looking for their abusers, and when they found them, proceeded to beat them to within an inch of their lives? I read a story once of a family […]
