On July 25, US Attorney General William Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to update its execution protocol and schedule five executions starting this December. Whether you support the death penalty or not — I don’t because I prefer limited government and the power to kill disarmed prisoners in cold blood and with premeditation…
It would appear these days, that unless one can show that one is important or an expert in some way or other, one will not be taken seriously by those who only see life as a social climbing highway called ‘career making’. Gone, as important values for society, is respect for simple common sense, the…
George Orwell, the world-renowned author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, wrote the following essay in 1946. In it, he sets out how language can be corrupted, leading to unclear, sloppy thinking. He is especially concerned with how the powerful use vague writing to cover up their own misdeeds. Despite being published over 70 years ago, this essay is as relevant…
“Politics stops at the water’s edge” was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation. The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress moved to back Truman’s leadership…
2018 wasn’t a good year for Israel. It was even worse for Palestinians, of course. On the surface, it wasn’t an especially dramatic year – just a lot more of the same, without major new wars, and without much bloodshed if you compare it to most previous years. Things appeared frozen in place. The occupation…
Since I last wrote about the bipartisan shrieking, hysterical reaction to Trump’s planned military withdrawal from Syria the other day, it hasn’t gotten better, it’s gotten worse. I’m having a hard time even picking out individual bits of the collective freakout from the political/media class to point at, because doing so would diminish the frenetic white noise…
