“Today, it is clear that the elements of a perfect storm are gathering: There is a large supply of plutonium and highly enriched uranium--what we call weapons-usable nuclear materials--spread across hundreds of sites in 32 countries, too much of it poorly secured.”
We spend an amazing amount of our daily lives performing odd rituals ... I’m talking about the little, patterned actions we do repeatedly, even if they seem to make no sense.
I got my first job when I was 12. The deacons at my church paid me $2 a week to keep it swept and mopped.
Florida is the state that put the first man on the moon, NBC’s Brian Williams noted at the Republican presidential debate in Tampa. He asked the candidates, “At a time when you all want to shrink federal spending, should space exploration be a priority?”
Only days after her brother lost his legs in Afghanistan, Olivia Hoffman learned that she and her husband were expecting their second child. Already overwhelmed with emotion as her big brother fought for his life, Olivia asked God for strength.
Fort Benning and the foot soldier lost a true and loyal friend this past year.
There is a new, actually a renewed, curse word in politics this year -- socialism. The narrative is that one candidate seeks to gain our confidence by convincing us he or she will protect us from the opposing candidate who is bound and determined to dismantle the United States’ capitalist foundation and replace it with socialism.
In the late 1980s, West Point Lake was green and murky, an example of what happens when inadequately treated sewage and other pollution from upstream sources flows into a lake. Businesses and families that depend on a clean, healthy lake were seriously affected; news stories reported the lake was “dying.”
My first day of my first economics class in college did not begin with the professor giving us an elegantly articulated statement of microeconomic theory. It began with definitions of private goods and public goods.
Every Sunday night, the mega-carriages drop millions of us off at “Downton Abbey,” the hit PBS series about an aristocratic family, its English country estate and the complexities of being Them at the dawn of the 20th century.
We spend an amazing amount of our daily lives performing odd rituals. Not the formal, mass rituals of religious practice or patriotic events that shepherd our emotions and concentrate our minds on fundamental truths. I’m talking about the little, patterned actions we do repeatedly, even if they seem to make no sense.
The Supreme Court can pack large portents in small details. When in late March it considers the constitutionality of Obamacare, there will be five and a half hours of oral argument -- the most in almost half a century.
Nearly 30 years ago Greg told me how it was, cutting the ears off dead men.
You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Montgomery bus boycott by Rosa Parks that Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead. You know about his efforts at integrating lunch counters. You’ve read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in school. You’ve watched the “I Have A Dream” speech clips on the History Channel. ou’ve been told about the national and international accolades.
Let’s set aside the back-and-forth over the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as chief watchdog at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama named the former Ohio attorney general to lead the agency when the Senate was supposedly out of session, which he’s allowed to do.
They are nearing 70 now, the 11 men who were 12-year-old boys in 1955 and who are remembered for the baseball games they could not play. They were -- actually, with their matching blue blazers and striped ties, they still are -- members of the Cannon Street All Stars.
We’ve been down this road before. And like a trip to the dentist for a root canal, the fact that it’s necessary doesn’t mean it will be delightful. From past experience, we know there are serious risks along the way for the unwary.
We gather here today to parse the meaning of “boo.”
In cities and towns across America, millions of little children dream of becoming firefighters, soldiers or leaders. In Bordentown, N.J., one little boy became all three.
There are people in the world I dislike.
It’s possible for this country to save a huge amount of money that would otherwise be spent over the next year. I’m talking many millions, money that could be used for any number of worthwhile projects.
The complaint that Iowa is not a typical American state is true but trivial because there is no such state.
So here’s how it is: You have no driver’s license because you have nothing to drive. You have no passport because you’ve never been out of the country. You have no other photo ID because you have no bank account. You work and get paid under the table, a wad of cash sliding from hand to hand.
The question I get, even more than “How were your holidays?” is “What the heck happened in Iowa in the Republican caucuses?” And folks have good reason to ask, as the results were fairly confusing.
So Mitt Romney “won” Iowa by eight votes, giving him the “Big Mo” (that’s momentum) as he marches forth into the primaries. What happened to Rick Santorum’s surge? Did a Dodge Caravan full of supporters break down on the way to the gymnasium? I mean, world history has pivoted on less.
Shortly after wounded 1st Lt. Timothy Fallon was flown to the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in November 2010, he awoke to a world of darkness.
This was a bleak year for anyone who dreams of Middle East peace or Arab-Jewish coexistence.
This was the Year of the Middle Class -- as in, its falling incomes, loss of job security and anger. The global economic forces fueling the decline, such as foreign competition and computers, have been well reported. But what about cultural factors? Is the middle class going down partly because it stopped acting middle class?
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is famously liberal and frequently reversed. Recently, however, a unanimous three-judge panel of this court did something right when it held that bone marrow donors can be compensated.
When the voters’ job rating of Congress fell in one national poll to just 9 percent positive, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain explained that “9 percent” meant he and his congressional colleagues were “down to blood relatives and paid staffers.”
