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Why Gingrich can't win
Newt Gingrich has a lot going for him if he decides to run for president — a famous name, a record of accomplishment, a knack for raising money and a rhetorical flair that appeals to his party’s co...
11 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Stay out of Libya
The civil war in Libya was barely underway before some American politicians were insisting the United States crash the party. We have been fighting in Afghanistan for nine years and Iraq for eight,...
11 months ago | 0 0 comments | 1 1 recommendations | email to a friend
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How the law works
My guess is that there was not a single member of the United States Supreme Court who was not personally appalled that the Westboro Baptist Church would target the funeral of a soldier who died in ...
11 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Democracy isn’t enough
Though one hates to nitpick, it seems that Middle East coverage on cable TV has been only almost perfect. You see, for some reason, a number of anchors and talking heads have made a careless habit ...
11 months ago | 0 0 comments | 2 2 recommendations | email to a friend
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A birthright and a mess of pottage
If two foreigners come here illegally and bear a child, the child automatically gains American citizenship. That fact drives some people around the bend. Last year, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, sai...
12 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Attack of the food police
The government tells us what medicines we may take and what recreational substances we may ingest, but when it comes to food, we decide what goes down our gullets. Gun-owning barbecuers coexist pea...
15 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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JAMRS
The government sent my son a $2 bill. And they promised him another $5 if he would spend 15 minutes filling out a survey. If you ask me, they should spend the money on young men and women with unt...
16 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Assassinations done right
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I just wonder: If a president — any president — has the authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without oversight, what exactly can’t a presiden...
16 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Republicans for religious freedom
Ten years ago, Republicans in Congress passed a major law to protect the right of Muslims to establish mosques even where such a building might be unwelcome. Yes, they did. They just may not have t...
17 months ago | 0 0 comments | 4 4 recommendations | email to a friend
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When is it ‘bigoted’ to criticize religion?
When it comes to the proposed Islamic center near ground zero, I subscribe to President Barack Obama’s position: “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this count...
17 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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What was I going to say?
The Daily Telegraph brings welcome news — “Old age begins at 27 as mental powers start to decline, scientists find.” It seems that the University of Virginia conducted mental acuity tests on 2,000 ...
17 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Giving birth to immigration fears
The campaign against birthright citizenship has been on a roll. Last month, it won the endorsement of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, long seen as a moderate on immigration. He favor...
17 months ago | 1 1 comments | 4 4 recommendations | email to a friend
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Time for a divorce
In the 1500s, a pestering theologian instituted something called the Marriage Ordinance in Geneva, which made “state registration and church consecration” a dual requirement of matrimony. We have ...
18 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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A Rhee of hope?
Though I’ve seen evidence to the contrary, experts assure me that children are the nation’s most precious natural resource. Logic, then, says that teaching is the most important profession in the c...
18 months ago | 0 0 comments | 4 4 recommendations | email to a friend
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Looking to avert disaster
The outpouring of tens of thousands of classified military documents by WikiLeaks is not precisely comparable to the publication of the Pentagon Papers — but in at least one crucial respect, it may...
18 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Show us the money
So often are the certitudes and pronouncements of the chattering class simply mistaken that they must always be treated with deep skepticism. That is especially true when anything important is at s...
19 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Stuck in Afghanistan
There is good news about Afghanistan. No, really. It comes from Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist and author of the book “The Promise: President Obama, Year One.” He thinks the president is firml...
19 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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U.S. Cuba policy: A 50-year failure?
After a 134-day hunger strike, Guillermo Farinas’ waist is so small that a dog collar could fit around it. This living skeleton (who has survived this long only because he has taken nutrients intra...
19 months ago | 0 0 comments | 3 3 recommendations | email to a friend
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Tough sell
There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that BP could say in an ad that would change my thinking about the oil business or prompt me to buy BP gas. So it’s hard to fathom why BP continues to run so ma...
19 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Why, oh, why doesn’t Obama save us?
Not long ago, Barack Obama was pilloried for being too activist, too meddlesome and too inclined to see himself as the messiah. He was forcing health care reform down our throats, running General M...
20 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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The so-called cuckoo’s nest
Any impartial national media type will tell you as much: A bunch of half-baked zealot nut jobs have emerged from the Republican primary field. Folks like Nevada’s Sharron Angle and California’s Car...
20 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Up front in America
Every Saturday morning, just for fun and without spending a dime on gas, I take a trip to roughly 100 American cities and towns. I do this through a terrific website operated by the Newseum, a fa...
20 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Happy Memorial Day
It’s time once again to remember those who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country so that the rest of us can argue over the details and then go home to dinner with our families. ...
20 months ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Leave them tubes alone
As there is no real problem with the Internet, it’s not surprising that some of our top minds have been working diligently on a solution. In a 2001 interview (one that only recently has gone viral...
20 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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The truth about gun sales to terrorists
Months before he loaded his SUV with propane tanks and fireworks and drove to Times Square, police say, Faisal Shahzad went to a firearms store and bought a rifle. It was found in his other car at...
20 months ago | 0 0 comments | 11 11 recommendations | email to a friend
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Meeting stupidity with stupidity
Isaac Newton formulated three laws of motion, No. 3 being: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If he were still around, he’d propose a fourth: For every action, there is an u...
21 months ago | 0 0 comments | 9 9 recommendations | email to a friend
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The value of the ‘Obama effect’
As approval ratings for Barack Obama decline at home, world opinion of the United States is rising steadily under his stewardship. A new international survey by the British Broadcasting Company re...
21 months ago | 0 0 comments | 11 11 recommendations | email to a friend
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24-hour party people
Yesterday I waded into a mass of tea party protesters gathered at the front of Colorado’s Capitol and completely forgot to brace myself for a “small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht” (as New York Tim...
21 months ago | 1 1 comments | 11 11 recommendations | email to a friend
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Senate v. The Constitution
With all the praise being heaped on departing Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a person might have forgotten momentarily that the man spent a good chunk of the past two decades working to s...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 13 13 recommendations | email to a friend
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The currency bubble
One of the bigger obstacles to the US economy gaining substantial numbers of jobs is the battle over valuation of currency among different nations. The amount a currency is valued at is largely tie...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 13 13 recommendations | email to a friend
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No fat kids!
No offense, but the next time I hear Michelle Obama lecture me about feeding kids locally farmed kumquats, I’ll be forced to pile my family into an SUV and hit the Burger King drive-through just to...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 10 10 recommendations | email to a friend
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Obama’s ‘unilateral disarmament’
When Republicans and Democrats agree on a factual matter, it is for one of two reasons. Sometimes it’s because a certain fact is true. And sometimes it’s because both sides hope to gain from promot...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 10 10 recommendations | email to a friend
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Masters of distraction
The mob is furious. And while it hollers about “killing” bills, Republicans stoke the fury by calling on citizens to “target” races in “battleground” states. Get it? “Target.” The violent intentio...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 11 11 recommendations | email to a friend
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The mandate and mug clause
What does it say about your cause that nearly every policy idea you cook up is based in some form or another on coercing the American people? When House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, ...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 13 13 recommendations | email to a friend
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Guts and glory
No Republicans supported Medicare in the House of Representatives until it reached the floor. It came out of the House Ways and Means and Rules committees on strict party-line votes. On the procedu...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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In for a dime, in for a dollar
When I heard about the proposal to replace Ulysses S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill, I had two thoughts. The first: Grant is on the $50 bill? The second: Jimmy Carter is going to be furi...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Actually, process does matter
The Democratic Party believes so deeply in the will of the American people that it may courageously not vote on a bill that it couldn’t pass. It was The Washington Post that recently compressed th...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Why are we still bowing?
Not long after President Barack Obama gave his conciliatory speeches to the Islamic world, he chose not to meddle in the sham election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact, he offered ...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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The new McCarthyism
The national madness known as “McCarthyism” began 60 years ago in Wheeling, W.V., when Joseph R. McCarthy held up a scrap of paper that supposedly listed the names of 57 State Department officials ...
22 months ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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The Democrats won’t talk about this provision
“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future ... We have to pass the...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Repeal Obamacare? Unlikely
There seems to be growing optimism among some Republicans that if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finagles the votes to pass Obamacare, the GOP triumphantly will sweep into power and immediately repeal ...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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A sorry complaint about Obama
Don’t you miss the days when we had a Republican president who was not afraid to speak up for America in the face of foreign criticism? The kind of president who didn’t feel the United States is al...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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The courage of his convictions
When you ask people why it is that they hate or distrust politicians, the usual answers, understandably so, are all about what gutless wonders most politicians are — addicted to their polls, determ...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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The politics of earthquakes
If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life — while right-win...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Peculiar be thy name
Perhaps no finer Christian name has ever been bestowed upon a child than the one Jermaine Jackson, of Jackson 5 fame, came up with for his son: Jermajesty. We can forgive the famous for not being ...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Voyeurism dressed as a public service
It’s none of my business what Barack Obama’s LDL cholesterol level is. And I don’t have to know that he is using nicotine therapy to attempt to kick his smoking habit. But all of this and more is d...
23 months ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Happy Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day was not one of my favorite holidays when I was a twenty-something looking for love. I spent too much time waiting to see what I was getting and not enough time wondering what I coul...
24 months ago | 0 0 comments | 10 10 recommendations | email to a friend
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Say no to democracy
If you’ve been paying attention to the left-wing punditry these days, you may be under the impression that the nation’s institutions are on the verge of collapse. Or that the rule of law is unravel...
24 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Frontier suburbanite
Al Gore is responsible for this. He taunted Mother Nature. Consider this her memo: Don’t Presume To Know What I Have in Store. Here in Fairfax County, we thought we were prepared. I had purchased ...
24 months ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Massachusetts miracle
Everyone knows that what doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger. That is particularly true in politics, where a hard kick either knocks you down or wakes you up. President Obama and the Democrats ...
24 months ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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The value of diversity
Diversity is not just a nice thing. It isn’t just about fairness or equal opportunity. Diversity is good business, essential business, especially for companies that market to women — or are covered...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 8 8 recommendations | email to a friend
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Has Obama moved center on nuclear power?
The perennially optimistic strained to find evidence of a new centrism in President Obama’s State of the Union address. Well, the Hyde Park liberal embraced nuclear power, they say. And he did seem...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 10 10 recommendations | email to a friend
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The American Dream vs. car manufacturers
There was a period of time in American history when it was a commonly held belief that car manufacturers would always do well in the US because cars would always be needed. It was pointed out to ...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 8 8 recommendations | email to a friend
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Fiscal fraud - or frugality?
For the past year, Republicans have been criticizing Barack Obama for out of control spending. So they must be pleased that they have forced him, in his State of the Union address, to concede the p...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 9 9 recommendations | email to a friend
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Focus on the family
CBS will air an ad during the Super Bowl in which college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam Tebow, discuss her decision not to have an abortion despite doctors’ advice to do so. The news ...
2 years ago | 1 1 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Obama’s rhetorical retreat
Tax credits? Spending freezes? Deficit commissions? The president is starting to sound a lot like one of those fiscal he-devils the Democrats have been warning the nation about for years. Not to w...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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No Obama obituaries, please
Having taken the oath of office just one year ago, Barack Obama is a flashing meteor that sputtered out too soon — or so the national media narrative tells us. According to this story line, the you...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Global freezing
Whether or not you believe that human technology and waste had anything to do with it, it’s obvious that old ice caps, bergs and floes are rapidly melting. The Big Melt comes with consequences, lik...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Faux recovery
One glorious day, all of us will awaken in our mixed-use neighborhoods, rustle up nutritious garden-grown breakfasts and pedal our bikes to “green-collar” jobs using paths generously provided by th...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Flying with the enemy
When comedian Joan Rivers was booted off a flight from Costa Rica to Newark, N.J., this past weekend, it was not because she had perpetrated crimes against the human appearance. Rather, it was beca...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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The lady and the bracelet
We got to the airport two hours early. My daughter made fun of me. Maui is not a likely terrorist target. Then again, the president was about one minute away in Oahu, and so was Rush Limbaugh, so w...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Hide the decline ... and more
In this country, even a global warming denialist with a carbon fetish and bad intentions has the right to see the inner workings of government. Or, at least, he should. When leaked e-mails recent...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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The Democrats blinked
By bowing to Sen. Joseph Lieberman and his obstructive pals in both parties on health care reform, President Obama has confirmed what Republicans always say about Democrats: They simply aren’t stro...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Fair and balanced (and phony) science
Evading the challenges of climate change -- and the human responsibility to save the planet -- is simple enough even for the laziest citizen. Pay attention only to the theories that support the com...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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A losing bet in Afghanistan
President Obama has outlined his new Afghanistan strategy, and the critics have had a lot to say. Things will be tougher than they were in Iraq, warned one opponent. The American general in charge ...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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Clods in Congress
One of the ostensible reasons for reforming our health insurance system is the need to halt the growth of spending on medical treatment. So it may be a surprise to learn that in its first major vot...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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What I don't know about Afghanistan
People keep asking me whether I agree with the president’s troop surge in Afghanistan. I am a lawyer. I know what to do with a hard question: Answer another one that is so similar that even the per...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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A crushing legacy
From now on, the headlines about Afghanistan will be slugged “Obama’s War,” and perhaps that is fair enough given the president’s many endorsements of what he has called a war of necessity. It woul...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Socially conscious toys for tots
Ah, the Christmas season is upon us. What better time to make our children more socially and environmentally aware. I refer to an interesting item in The National Post: More toymakers are producin...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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A reason to be skeptical
Who knows? In the long run, global warming skeptics may be wrong, but the importance of healthy skepticism in the face of conventional thinking is, once again, validated. What we know now is that ...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 9 9 recommendations | email to a friend
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The family constellation
The Family Constellation is a form of therapy that says all of our present day kinks in our personality are due to the family line behind us. Malcolm Gladwell touches on this idea in his latest boo...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 8 8 recommendations | email to a friend
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Checkouts and markups
It’s that time of the year again. Time to feel like a fool. I started early this year, at Bed Bath and Beyond. Mind you, I love the store — two shiny new floors of beautiful things that you don’t h...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Understanding our hollow 'centrists'
The puzzling thing about politicians of either party who claim to be “centrist” or “moderate” is how much they sometimes sound like party-line right-wing Republicans. Distinguishing among these spe...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 8 8 recommendations | email to a friend
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Holder's true motive
Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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The geeks had a word for it
Like other books Americans have a duty to own — the Bible and “Atlas Shrugged,” for instance — the dictionary does not require an absurd marketing ploy to sell itself. Yet every year, a barrage of...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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The Palin experience
These days, where you fall on the crucial issue of Sarah Palin tells the rest of us all we need to know about your character. You’re either A) a scum-sucking, terror-loving elitist or B) a radical,...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Fire Gen. Casey
“What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” Those words were spoken not by some diversity guru but by the...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Democrats may regret new strategy
Former President Bill Clinton visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver a pep talk to Senate Democrats. “It’s not important to be perfect here. It’s important to act, to move, to start the ball roll...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 9 9 recommendations | email to a friend
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Testing next year's lies today
Within hours after the House of Representatives approved health care reform by a narrow margin, Republicans predicted retribution at the polls next fall. They promised to make every Democrat regret...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Muslims and mass murder
Mass murders are usually a mystery. When Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly committed one last week at Fort Hood, though, there was no time wasted in solving the mystery by blaming the massacre on his reli...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 5 5 recommendations | email to a friend
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How does Williams measure up as a writer?
What sets Roy Williams apart from his colleagues? Many fans would say simply that Williams is the best basketball coach in the profession today. But there is more. A few days ago Coach Williams’ ...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 7 7 recommendations | email to a friend
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Government by Holiday Inn Express
You’ve seen those commercials in which an airline pilot, or surgeon, or nuclear engineer is giving expert advice only to acknowledge eventually to his nonplussed listeners that while he is not actu...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Fox News is biased? So what?
Those of you paying even the slightest attention these days realize that President Barack Obama has been the target of a near-criminally biased and antagonistic mass media. Someone had to put a st...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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Max's adventure in wonderland
For Philistines like me, the mysteries of Washington can be both perplexing and wondrous. If you’ve been watching noted alchemist Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., conjure up health care gold this week, yo...
2 years ago | 0 0 comments | 6 6 recommendations | email to a friend
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When compassion is cruel
People don’t always get what they deserve in this world, so it is gratifying to see when someone does. It happened Wednesday when a California parole board insisted that Susan Atkins, a 61-year-old...
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George Will was right
This week, prominent conservative pundit George Will wrote a column advocating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. His piece, not surprisingly, was met with instantaneous anger, disdain...
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