So registered: one more man with one more weapon of mass-killing capacity — 18 more dead. It’s a scenario now as commonplace as Friday Night Lights. Mass murder: the American pastime. Time after time, the specifics rarely vary. The killer uses an AR-style, high-capacity weapon. And Republican lawmakers wave their arms with a rationale supplied…
The day Joe Biden made an arduous and risky flight to Israel, I rubbed my eyes to read the account of another president’s mission to a remote land. This one was to North Dakota. Enroute to a campaign rally in Fargo, N.D., then-President Donald Trump had the ear of the state’s junior Republican U.S. senator,…
The disbelief in the room was audible. I had just informed students in my college mass media class that – yes – a felon could be president. A multiple felon. A sentence-serving felon, as long as the felon is 35 and a citizen. Check your Constitution. Check Google. One student said she heard someone could…
Until through our consumptive excess we no longer fit into Earth’s plans, religion will reign as the most destructive force on the planet. So much suffering: so many moral precepts stamped by – and corrupted by — mortals. Consider the war raging in which many more will die today – civilians of all ages, soldiers…
From the unearthly tint of his reverse mullet to his cowhide smile. From his claim of obscene wealth – “I’ll finance my own campaign” — to the countless followers he conned out of countless dollars to “Stop the steal.” From a phony foundation to a fraudulent “university.” From illegally inflating the values of his properties…
I’ve never felt sufficiently schooled to ascribe to a higher being that which lower beings do, or fail to. Occasionally, however, an event screams out, “Attention: Message from God.” Such is the Sept. 10 flood that erased from this earth much of the Libyan city of Derna and nearly a quarter of its 80,000 residents.…
The only useful thing to deduce from polls more than a year away from the next presidential election is this from Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin: “We have a deficit of accurate, reliable information in the electorate.” She’s right. A ghastly chunk of today’s voters simply don’t know what they’re talking about. “They tell pollsters…
At the college where I teach, the school year started with an “LGBTQ Appreciation” reception. It was followed by a Black student reception, followed by a first-generation student event. Then the school celebrated a new multicultural resources zone at the student center. At my school, the words “diversity, ethnicity and inclusion” are points of pride.…
Nobody ever accused Donald Trump of not knowing his constituency. Having lost the presidency, having made a list of suspects behind the “steal” (which he concocted long before losing), he and his MAGA kin have compiled a list of new offenses linked to the theft. The terms fit well with the old Jim Crow standby,…
Reviewing my shiny new set of Fulton County Indictment Cards, hearing a TV analyst piercingly call events “corruption colliding with consequences,” I thought of a nice old lady I encountered in 2016. Well, not exactly nice. Gray-haired and petite, she certainly looked less than deadly. That was before she saw literature with which I had…