Everyone knows the adjective form of “good”: Good tidings. Good cheer. Good grief. But there’s the noun form, too: The condition of good or goodness. The common good. The greater good. So we ask today: Is government any good? To be honest, that’s a silly question, considering the schools and roads it enables, the old-age…
DetailsCharles Barkley calls Twitter “a place where fools go to feel important.” He’s talking about you, Donald. You’ve built a fool’s paradise, constructed in planks of 140 words or less. Like many who find that kind of fame salutary, your ambitions are destined to go no further than…
DetailsThe arrival of the Beatles. The Civil Rights Act. LBJ’s rout of Goldwater. All vied for “Biggest Story” of 1964. But another might have eclipsed them all: the Surgeon General’s report definitively linking smoking with cancer. Why so big? Well, that year four of 10 American adults smoked. Yes, this cancer thing was big news.…
DetailsYou bet it was political. Moments after it happened, we were all certain. That was in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh’s fertilizer bomb made rubble of the Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168. You bet it was political as well last week when a wide-eyed, white-bearded Obama-hater was charged with the deaths of…
DetailsI was minding my own and humanity’s business on the Internet when I checked my Gmail and found the most horrifying thing. “Sensational sweet potatoes,” said the email. Why did I click on its contents? I probably shouldn’t have. The fact is that my gamble was made in the purest pursuit of…
Details“I should have learned sushi.” So says James in a rare moment of retrospection. Most days he has no time for that. He is all forward motion. His goal is to be an architect. Now he’s working in food service and mastering English. A sushi chef makes more than what James does at the moment.…
DetailsSure, it seems like the race for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination has been going on since lily pads were green. However, let’s acknowledge that it was just June 16 when the starter’s gun fired. Or, when Donald Trump first shot off his mouth. Trump registered in decibels and kinship with xenophobes the moment he…
Details"Welcome to absolutely the very last Republican presidential debate. We promise. I’m your moderator, Elizabeth Hasselbeck. “Because the candidates have complained about their treatment by the media, each questioner on our panel has been selected by an individual candidate based on mutual affection and nothing more. “Though we are here at Fox News headquarters, pursuant…
DetailsIt’s not true that nothing gets done in Congress. You can’t have a resolution designating “National Day of the American Cowboy” and a designation of “Hockey is for Everyone Month” without bipartisan cooperation. Give our most embarrassing public institution some credit. Sure, generally what emanates from those corridors has all the functionality…
DetailsAs Tim Murphy observed in piece in Mother Jones, Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the Benghazi Committee lasted, among other things, longer than the Anglo-Zanzibar War, the lifespan of a female mayfly, and, more onerously, the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy on screen. And I couldn’t even get through “The Fellowship of the…
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