A Life Apart Perhaps it is the noted Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer who reminds us the Lincoln marriage was one lived largely apart. During the early years, Abraham Lincoln, a busy Springfield lawyer, rode the circuit, gone for weeks at a time,  with judges and other counsel. They would huddle around a campfire or sleep […]

Privacy–What’s That? I was doing what people do the other evening, scanning Facebook, when I was presented with a post of a scantily clad woman turning toward me as she lay abed with what could be described as a “quasi-come-hither” gaze. Hmm. Clever ad? “Sponsored content”? Nope. A “friend” at least of the facebook genre, […]

The Holocaust in a Whole New Light Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau lectured yesterday at the National Archives about his new book The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men. He became aware of the subject when a source told him that the US Justice Department had […]

United Firefighters Union (UFUA) Over Country Fire Authority (CFA) The Federal Court in Australia recently  overturned an earlier lower court decision governing staffing in the Country Fire Authority which is responsible for emergency response across the state of Victoria excluding areas covered by the Melbourne Fire Brigade. CFA is roughly comparable to California’s CAL FIRE […]

Stay or Go? In this era of terror mayhem it behooves us all to think through how we would react in a potentially lethal environment. This past Monday afternoon a Washington, D.C., metrorail train stopped in a tunnel after an arcing incident occurred on the track. The loaded train apparently remained stationary as heavy smoke […]

According to media, Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran, a former US Fire Administrator, has been terminated for lack of judgment in publishing and disseminating a book which compares homosexuality to bestiality and pederasty and for giving it to employees, some of whom complained. Cochran and others, including the Georgia Baptist Convention, charge that his religious […]

Seesaw on the Mississippi War consists of two basic options: defense or offense. The middle ground is the perilous transition between the two, mastered only by the truly expert. Two hundred years ago today, the war of 1812 thundered to an effective close when two able leaders, Andrew Jackson and Edward Pakenham made history on […]

Lyndon and Martin at the Movies In this 50th anniversary year of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, a new film directed by Ava DuVernay tells a version of the story of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, which focused national attention on the plight of blacks in the south. I say “version” […]

Make That A #4 To Go Life may be one big tragedy but where kids and guns are concerned there is a hierarchy of devastation. 1) The worst has to be a parent killing a child; 2) Then any adult killing a child; 3) Followed by a child killing a child; 4) Then a child […]