Here we go again. Another gaggle of troops posing in the act of desecrating dead bodies or exhibiting glee at the deaths or in some other way representing in a bad light the country we like to think is the last great hope on earth.
We moderns seem determined to suppress all unhappiness with one exception: grief. The intense sadness following loss of a loved one still occupies a warm spot in our culture. We want that pain protected from the deadening analgesics of pharmaceuticals.
So the people got sick of it, all those criminals being coddled by all those bleeding heart liberal judges with all their soft-headed concern for rights and rehabilitation.
Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: "What country are we in?" He and his wife Pat are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language.
Instead of resisting the inevitable integration of women into the Rangers and other elite combat forces, Army leaders should get to work on making it work.
I had a chance to spend some time with Ashley Bell this weekend. Ashley and I have been friends for more than a decade, so we always enjoy spending time together.
Less than a month after Staff Sgt. Travis Mills lost his arms and legs in a southern Afghanistan terrorist attack, his wife Kelsey paused to reflect on an unimaginable ordeal.
I promised Russell I would ask you something.We met last week in a medium-security correctional facility.
There are so many serious matters to be concerned about. Can anything be done to ease the effects of climate change? Will we ever make it all the way back from the impact of the recession? Can we successfully defeat terrorism? And, most important of all, what will Kate and William be doing this week?
Spc. Alex Rozanski was serving as a United States Marine in 2003 when his older brother, Nick, decided to follow in his footsteps and join the military.
On the HBO series "Girls," Hannah asks her boss at a publishing house for a salary. The 24-year-old has been working as an unpaid intern for over a year, and her parents will no longer support her.
Prius, which is Latin for "to go before" or "lead the way," is the perfect name for the car whose owners are confident they are leading the way for the benighted.
"It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."With that statement, President (and candidate) Barack Obama advanced a cause that had been moving at geological speed until Vice President Joe Biden suddenly thrust the administration into support.Last time a presidential campaign jumped the gun on gay matters, Bill Clinton casually promised to end the exclusion of gays from the military in 1992. Although he didn't lose that election, many analysts date the weakening of his administration from his losing battle to make good on that promise, culminating in the universally despised "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Words are powerful. It is important to thoughtfully choose the words we use. Case in point: the word marriage.
I don't care about George Zimmerman's MySpace page.
The likely Republican presidential pick has renounced his modern views to appease the party's powerful social conservatives.
Tuesday night, the Ledger-Enquirer will honor 190 outstanding seniors from 19 high schools in our Chattahoochee Valley circulation area during the annual Page One Awards at the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.
Distance, disapproval, time and war couldn't diminish this lifelong romance.
In February, Linda Mills watched her husband deploy to Afghanistan for the second time. Today, even though Staff Sgt. Andrew Mills is thousands of miles away, he still occupies every moment of his wife's thoughts.
All of us have been there. We sit down at the kitchen to reconcile the checkbook and discover that there is not enough money in the checking account to meet all the upcoming obligations.
Controversies can be wonderfully clarified when people follow the logic of illogical premises to perverse conclusions.
Since 1926, the College Board has been branding high school students with test scores that can significantly alter their path to college. The College Board's standardized exams, tainted with bias, claim to be able to determine a student's success in college merely after 4 hours of testing. The dreaded SAT has become more heavily weighted on the college application, which has resulted in many more fretful teenage lives. Four years of rigorous courses, great grades, community service and involvement, and determination can easily be overlooked in the admissions office because of a not-so-great SAT score.
Around noon on Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, almost exactly 24 hours after the assassination in Dallas, while the president's casket lay in the East Room of the White House, Arthur Schlesinger, John Kennedy's kept historian, convened a lunch at Washington's Occidental restaurant with some other administration liberals. Their purpose was to discuss how to deny the 1964 Democratic presidential nomination to the new incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, and instead run a ticket of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Sen. Hubert Humphrey.
Pobre Mexico! Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.
Today, I will be in the sanctuary when Rev. J. H. Flakes III delivers his first sermon as pastor of the Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church. Anyone who knows anything about Baptist congregations knows that pastoral transitions in our denomination can be difficult. It is not unusual for Baptist congregations to split when the time comes to call a new pastor. Like the old adage says, "There's church. There's politics. Then there's church politics."
A modern knowledge economy thrives on highly trained workers. The way to get them, obviously, is through education -- from basic reading skills for some, to mastery of algorithms for others. It thus would seem a basic public good to provide that learning at little or no cost to students, which most advanced countries do. But America has turned post-high-school education into a taxpayer-subsidized business -- a business not unlike real estate at the height of the housing bubble.
Why should you still care about the war in Afghanistan? Here are six powerful reasons:
Twenty years ago today, my hometown burned.
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. It's almost done, but perhaps there's still time to look around us as well as within our own minds and hearts and consider the lot of children in our society.
If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said.
