Thomas Jefferson collected old books and French wines, Warren Harding collected poker buddies, and FDR collected stamps. Harry S Truman collected sheet music and played the piano. Once he played it at the National Press Club, with Lauren Bacall draped across the upright with a helping of cheesecake. Bess, the first lady, was not amused.
Before George H.W. Bush fades from memory into the darkness of history books, one more point needs to be made. It is about the contrast between how most of the major media treated him when he was president and how they mostly (but not completely) did a 180 during their coverage and commentary of his funeral.
What do the Paris riots, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the dusky gopher frog and Peter Wallison's new book "Judicial Fortitude" all have in common? They are all signs that the peasants have had it with the bureaucratic state and the smug elitists who have been ruling the globe. Despite never-ending attempts to quash it, the basic human desire for liberty keeps re-emerging.
On Oct. 15, 1950, early in the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman flew 7,000 miles to Wake Island in the Pacific to meet Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, to ask one simple question: Was there any chance that China would intervene in Korea?
Over the past few decades, secularists and leftists have mounted an aggressive effort to suppress Christianity's historical and current importance in America, and place all religions — or no religion — on the same level.
While Gov. Jerry Brown blames the horrific death toll from California's late-season wildfires on climate change, he and the state's lawmakers have done little to discourage people from building homes in high-risk wildfire zones known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). By shifting the cost of wildfire prevention and protection to general taxpayers, they send the wrong signals about risk to WUI homeowners.
The Christmas season is upon us and once again, the headlines in the mainstream news are replete with stories of secular intolerance of Christ's mass. Leading this year's Festivus parade is Jennifer Sinclair, the principal of Nebraska's Manchester Elementary School who sent out a memo earlier this week to her faculty, staff, students and parents telling them that Santa Claus, Christmas trees, reindeer, the colors green and red, and even candy canes were considered offensive and would, therefore, be prohibited at her school.
As we approach the New Year and an incoming Congress, it bears noting that in the past five years there have been several major legal victories supporting armed services personnel prosecuted for acting consistently with their religious beliefs about marriage. Going forward, military commanders must study these cases involving uniformed believers fighting to live out their faith.
The eulogies for George H.W. Bush keep rolling in and a great American hero's life has been given proper tribute.
Will future wars be waged by robots, with humans spared the agony and bloodshed of the battlefield? And can lethal machines be trusted not to turn on their supposed masters and blast them into oblivion?
Everybody wants to go to heaven, the wise man observed, but nobody wants to die. It's not a puzzlement. Everybody wants kind and gentle in our politics, but nobody wants to risk losing an election. That's not such a puzzlement, either.
On a lazy, sunny Sunday morning Dec. 7, 1941 at 7:48 Hawaiian time, a bitterly divided America was suddenly shocked into a singleness of purpose it had never seen before.
After four years of armed conflict, 10,000 casualties and 1.5 million internally displaced, the dangerous situation between Ukraine and Russia escalated again on Nov. 25. Russian military vessels rammed, shot at and seized three Ukrainian military ships that were routinely and legally passing through the Kerch Strait.
Holiday party season is fast approaching and just as doctors are button-holed for free advice on all manner of ailments, economists — especially those who write for the newspapers — get cornered about the stock market and with complaints that millennials are reluctant to buy homes and slowing the market.
Honor, decency, principled, character, grace, loyalty, optimistic, integrity, dignity, honesty, humble.
