Columns

Washington speaks with forked tongue on debt ceiling

The Federal Reserve doesn’t finance the U.S. debt directly but do so indirectly in huge ways—and then lies about it.

Condoleezza Rice and her message of equality

I was watching “The View” the other day, and while I’d normally come away from that experience scarred by the smirking face and screeching cackle of Joy Behar, this time was different. This time there was a woman with a brain at the table.

Memories of a non-political Halloween

Halloween was fun while it lasted. For decades it has been the one day of the year we could all forget our worries and live in the moment. When I was a kid in the 1970s, Halloween was for kids.

Shouldn’t America be happier?

Despite the many blessings of living in America, why aren’t more Americans happy? According to World Population Review, the 2021 World Happiness Report ranks America as the 19th happiest out of 146 countries.

Is Halloween cursed this year?

Someday we will all laugh about Halloween 2021. We may be laughing maniacally in padded cells, but we will laugh.

Hard part was getting on the bike

The Old Spanish Trail that crossed south Louisiana owed its existence in part to a bicycle craze that swept America in the late 1890s, and south Louisiana was just as crazy as the rest of the nation. The fad put a spotlight on Jennings for a short while.

Imaginary, destructive power of social media

It’s very easy these days to say that social media is toxic. People act in ways they’d never do in real life, because it isn’t real life. They act like feral wolves, because they can. The Twitter police don’t carry guns, and their badges are imaginary.

Journalism is dying by its own hand

The news media is about as popular as a first-century tax collector. This probably isn’t breaking news if you are a consumer of journalism, or what passes for journalism.

Joe Biden’s ‘Angry America’

It’s not until you leave the United States that you realize how angry Americans are. Earlier this month my wife the travel agent and I took a cruise in the Mediterranean from Athens to Barcelona by way of stops on the Greek island of Santorini and in Sicily.

Have you hugged a bureaucrat lately?

As a longtime fan of Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch, I feel compelled to say a few words on behalf of much-maligned bureaucrats everywhere.