June 1, 2020

Here is your permission slip to go about your business

I'm 66 years old and I have significant respiratory issues. If I'm infected by Covid-19 there's a good chance that I'll die. I'm writing today to give all of you who would like to get on with your lives permission to do so. ...

June 9, 2016

Another academic hit job on conservatives falls apart

Four years ago, I wrote an article for American Thinker that I believed was the final word on academic "studies" that were contorted to put conservatives in a bad light.  The study, which purportedly found that conservatives "are ...

May 15, 2015

Forks, Washington, and the Spotted Owl

Ever considered opening a restaurant?  Looking for a great location? Check out this this opportunity in Forks, Washington. The former Vagabond Restaurant, all 8,100 square feet of it, is priced to move at $100,000 (or basically, make an offer...

April 20, 2015

America's Best News Source?

The Onion, the wildly popular satirical newspaper and website, is often hilarious. It is as often offensive. On occasion, it's also profound. Let me point you to an example of the last. In this article, The Onion completely eviscerates the ...

April 2, 2015

The Greatest Story Never Told

The results of a recent survey show that more than two-thirds of Americans believe the number of people in the world living in poverty is increasing. Fortunately, they're wrong. The World Bank says since 1981 the percentage of the world's ...

March 21, 2015

Africa and Entrepreneurship

Since 1981, the percentage of the world's population living on less than $1.25 a day has dropped from 50 percent to just more than 20 percent.  Billions have been raised out of poverty as state control of capital has declined. Unfortunate...

February 4, 2015

Confessions of a clueless member of the elite

Left-wing elites believe they are friends of the working class.  Nothing could be farther from the truth. The two have virtually nothing in common. Indeed, says Benjamin Mako Hill, an elite can earn “cultural capital” – a...

May 9, 2014

The U.S. Postal Service: Junk in, junk out

Evan Baehr and Will Davis are two bright young fellows with a bright idea: wouldn't it be great if people could receive their regular mail like email? You know, digitized, and delivered via the Internet?  That would allow us to enjoy al...

September 21, 2013

The New York Times is obsessed with the Catholic Church

I know that as a Catholic I'm supposed to be very glad that the the new pope is receiving such a hearty welcome, especially from the media.  But I admit I grimace every time I see something like this recent headline from The New York Times:...

January 31, 2013

The Fall of Journalism

In the past 30-plus years I've interviewed dozens of candidates for jobs in journalism.  Among the questions I always posed is this one: Why are newspapers published? To date, no journalism school graduate has known the answer, which is, of cour...

July 27, 2012

That old gray lady, she ain't what she used to be

Well shut my mouth and call me preposterous. It seems like just yesterday I was on American Thinker lecturing one of our less-informed readers that the response to a request to review a newspaper article before it's published "is always and everywher...

July 26, 2012

Have Your Way with the Local Newspaper

As a newspaper reporter, I often find myself interacting with people who often interact with newspaper reporters. I'm often surprised at how bad they are at it.  Especially the politicians. Does it really need to be said that you should never, e...

April 8, 2012

Bigotry's Permanent Appeal

I grew up in the Deep South. I was born in New Orleans but spent most of my first 40 years living just north of the city in what is still unapologetically called "plantation country." When I was a kid in the '50s and '60s, the vilest racial epithets ...

April 3, 2012

The many faces of AARP

My wife just turned 50, so she recently experienced that least favorite American rite of passage:  the arrival of the dreaded solicitation letter from AARP. I'm pleased to say that she took advantage of this opportunity to do precisely as I have...

April 2, 2012

Conservatives and Science

A new study just released by a sociologist at the University of North Carolina provides two pieces of interesting information.  The study finds that conservatives, particularly college-educated conservatives, are losing confidence in the scienti...

March 30, 2012

Why I Am a Reporter

I'm 58 years old, and I'm a reporter at a small-town newspaper. The question naturally arises: how did I get myself into this fix? By the time they turn 58, most reporters have either taken a job as an editor or they've moved on to another job altoge...

July 15, 2010

For the love of God, please stop helping us!

Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama all went for McCain.  Now comes the retribution, in the form of an economy-destroying ban on deep-water oil well drilling.  The first moratorium was scornfully tossed by a federal district judge, an...

July 6, 2010

Feds to take another try at banning deep water drilling

Those of us who live along the Gulf Coast are desperately hoping the federal government will soon stop helping us with the BP oil spill. But no ... As we learned  this week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to take another swing at imposi...

June 26, 2010

Why the News Makes You Angry

Some time ago, a general manager of the Associated Press, the massive news collective, opined on the importance of "objectivity" in reporting, calling it the Holy Grail of journalism.He's right, but only in the sense that objectivity is the...

June 15, 2010

Connect the Dots

Here's a simple test. On this page we have a Google Maps mash-up that shows which nations are the easiest or the toughest places "to do business." On this page there is another Google Map, this one showing the ranking of nations by income. ...

June 12, 2010

Putting the Watchdogs on the Payroll

The internet is the best mechanism ever invented for the distribution and promotion of baseless conspiracy theories. But it is also a matchless device for distributing information on true, and truly disturbing, developments. Case in point: the F...

June 12, 2010

What we have here is a failure to recognize irony

This week Gannett New Jersey reporter Randy Bergmann took up again the question of  liberal bias in the media.  Like many of his colleagues, Bergmann is unconvinced, suggesting rumors of leftist bias are at the very least overblown.  B...

June 1, 2010

An Ode to Citizen Journalists

Why are newspapers published?Simple question, right? But there is one group of (theoretically) educated people who, when asked, find themselves at a loss.  I know what I'm talking about: During my thirty years in journalism, I've interviewed doz...