May 27, 2024

‘Twas the Shot Heard Around the World…

  By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard ‘round the world — Ralph Waldo Emerson​​ They came from the countryside, i...

March 1, 2024

Rest in peace, Andrew

Andrew Breitbart, conservative raconteur, tea party icon and political hell-raiser, passed away on March 1st, 2012, a dozen years ago today.  When I think back I don’t really care why he died, or how he died—I only care that he died,...

February 14, 2024

The Crucible

When I open my eyes in the morning, the first thing I lift my head to see is the clock sitting on the nightstand beside me. If it’s even a minute past six, I’m up and out of bed. Yes, I’m aware that retirement offers me the luxur...

January 10, 2024

Fourth Estate, Fifth Column

The term Fourth Estate, as many know, refers to the press; “press” being a now-archaic description hearkening back to a simpler time, when delivering news was strictly a function of metal, paper, ink, and the time it took to get it to the...

June 21, 2017

The Progressive Tea Party that Never Was

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, it’s deadly serious, and it appears to be metastasizing. And don’t expect calls for unity after the attempted assassination of a Republican lawmaker to help encapsulate it, either. The disease is far to...

November 24, 2012

The GOP can't 'out-left' the left

I tried.  I honestly and truly tried to get on board with the idea that the Republican Party must now jettison conservatives, make a left turn and charge hard towards the center. I listened to all the faultless logic; I processed all the reaso...

May 28, 2012

The Noble Sacrifice We Remember

There are 1,541 American men buried in Suresnes, France. In the cemetery at Meusse-Argonne, 14,246. At St. Mihiel, there are 4,153, and in Lorraine, 10,489 of our military dead.  There are others in France: in Somme, in the Rhone valley, in Aisn...

July 4, 2011

The Great Anniversary Festival

The words that launched this country on its journey to greatness were written by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and we can only wonder if, as he scratched his quill pen across a clean sheet of parchment, he knew the extent to which he would be shaping...

April 1, 2011

April 1, 1945: L-Day

Easter Sunday came early in 1945, and many of the tens of thousands of Marines waiting nervously in troop transports a few thousand yards off the beaches of the Ryukyu Islands must have feared that this day's celebration of the Resurrection would be ...

March 19, 2011

The 'Extreme' Label

Barry Goldwater finally wrestled the presidential nomination away from the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party.  If nothing else came out of the electoral trouncing he would receive at the hands of Lyndon Johnson some months later, two thin...

February 8, 2011

Republicans: Boxed In on the Budget?

A budget impasse looms, and Democrats smell opportunity -- a chance to regain a little of the mojo they lost following a beat-down last November at the hands of the tea party movement and their candidates.After meeting with White House Budget Directo...