Whenever she sees gratuitous spending, my wife thinks like a dog-cat lover. She thinks of the animal shelters that money could build. Don’t look now, but whole cities of animal shelters are being expended in legal fees by states across the country to promote and defend something Americans least need: noncompetitive, lock-cinch, party-rigged…
Let’s say your neighbor spent his working hours cooking methamphetamine. Let’s say that instead of cooking it in the basement, confining lethal fumes to his home-sweet four walls and his two incinerated lungs, your neighbor cooked meth as one would a backyard brisket: over your fence. Let’s say that, nauseated by the…
The subject here is destructive education policies. But first: Have you heard of the Capital One Cup? It goes to the two Division I NCAA schools that win the most titles each year in men’s and women’s sports. The prize? In addition to the glittering silver keepsake: $400,000 in athletic scholarships. Inspiring,…
My wife knew what she was talking about, but her fine instincts were not enough to move me. “Write a Christmas book,” she said. Nothing sells like a Christmas book. It’s short. It’s seasonal. It sells. You get it as a gift, you regift it next Christmas. Sales receipts don’t lie.…
Because I focused a lot of my writing life on small-town issues and a communal pact to educate my two sons and their peers, long ago I arrived at my own formula to justify, or not, a big sum of money. I broke down that sum into how many elementary schools it would build. Back…
It was an amazing statement from a Republican, and just what Democrats wanted to hear. It came from ex-Colorado congressman, hard-right foghorn and recently candidate-for-everything Tom Tancredo: “I firmly believe this … The greatest threat to the country that our founding fathers put together is the man that’s sitting in the White…
Here’s the situation coming down the stretch: The Affordable Health Care Act is winning by a nose. That would be the one-vote majority by which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the most sweeping reform of health care since Medicare. A Reagan appointee, of all…
The long campaign continues. It's not quite a lifetime long, like Gandhi’s against violence. Nonetheless, many miles have passed beneath my sandals as I’ve advanced my theme. For more than a quarter century each year around Thanksgiving, I have carried out a lonely and thankless campaign about sweet potatoes. Message: Think before you eat.…
As they took pepper spray in their faces, I wonder if they thought about fire hoses in Birmingham, tear gas in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, National Guard bullets at Kent State. Probably not. They thought of pain, and disbelief, the kind many felt seeing it on YouTube and on the news. …
The most amazing story of Nov. 8 was how Arizonans in a heavily Republican district ousted the state’s most powerful Republican lawmaker. Russell Pearce, president of the Senate, was replaced by a comparably conservative Republican. The key distinction, however, may be that the man who beat him wasn’t quite as angry. …