By Jefferson Flanders With all due credit to Big Apple columnist Jimmy Cannon, nobody asked me, but… GOVERNMENT SECRECY HARMS THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS, so it was heartening news that on New Year’s Eve President Bush signed into law an improved version of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation should accelerate the release of [...]

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What a unique idea, take the biggest non-fiction book franchise and marry it with Televisions most successful reality TV series ever. This is Chicken Soup For The American Idol Soul. I enjoyed the book a great deal, it is a delightful set of vignettes that are both funny and sad, yet all are uplifting tales [...]

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By John Donovan of RoyalDutchShellPlc.com The oil giant Shell has made a disconcerting start to the new year with uncertainty over how many Shell jobs are being cut, who will take over from Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer when he retires in June 2009, safety issues on North Sea platforms and why Shell has decided not [...]

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Okay, class: Paste conspiracy theories here. A couple days ago, two underseas internet cables were cut off the coast of Egypt, crashing that country’s internet service and slowing internet traffic as far off as India. There was a storm off of Egypt, and experts were wondering if a storm, or a ship’s anchor, could have [...]

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Lots of stuff in the news that might be terrorism. An attack near the Israeli Embassy in the Mauritania kills three people sitting in a nearby restaurant. Nope, it’s not that they were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, it was that those in the restaurant wouldn’t shoot back and it gave them time to [...]

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It is true that I want John McCain stopped. And, between McPain… I mean McCain… and Romney it would be Romney that is closer to the principles of a conservative when choosing a presidential candidate for the GOP. But, this is not to say I endorse Mitt the Malleable, either. The puzzle about Mitt is [...]

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The last Republican and Democrat presidential candidates left standing met for the final debates of the primary season in CA. The GOP debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley, was notable for the palpable loathing the two frontrunners have for each other. The Dem debate, held at the Kodak Theater in [...]

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Fox News gives us some details of Senator Jim DeMint’s (R, S.C.) efforts to revoke Federal funding that flows into the town of Berkley, California over their recent decision to throw out military recruiters from within the confines of the city. U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., says the City of Berkeley, Calif., no longer deserves [...]

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And they don’t even have a Dunkin’ Donuts there, do they? And imminent destruction or not, what the hell is that American soldier doing here (with a gun) in the heart of Berlin without a mandate from the Bundestag or from whomever it is who gives mandates for soldier Einsatz (deployment) here whenever monsters attack in [...]

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Behold the Beauty of the Lord, Praying with icons, by Henri J.M.Nouwen Published by Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN. www.avemariapress.com The writings of Father Nouwen are treasuries for the modern Catholic that seeks to develop and maintain a deeper prayer relationship within the vast life of Catholicism. In one of his last books, Fr.Nouwen [...]

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First term Kentucky House member Tim Moore (R, Elizabethtown) tried to start a debate on the efficacy of Kentucky’s prevailing-wage laws last week, but union flacks on the floor of the Commonwealth’s House would have none of it. He was quickly shut down when he tried to re-visit the idea of whether or not contractors [...]

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Comedian Al Franken is running for the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota, this the media is happy to report. But, for some unexplainable reason, the media isn’t so interested in reporting Franken’s odd behavior. It seems that an ungovernable rage is always just under the surface with Franken, a rage that has several times broken [...]

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Literary sleuths, thy professions are legion; Lydia Proctor, the heroine of this mystery is a genealogist and volunteer librarian – in those few hours that she can spare from her generally fulfilling and happy family life. Of that thin materiel a really engaging little historical mystery is spun. It’s a hundred-year old mystery, concerning the [...]

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The title pretty much sums up the whole concept of this fish-out-of-water tale, of a big-city Jewish railroad detective plunked down in the middle of the post-Civil-War Wild West to investigate an elaborately-planned and lethal robbery of a mail trail with a lot of money on board. The year is 1870; the detective is David [...]

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A friend of mine asked me to comment on a bill in the Philippine Congress that would have planned to implement a “two child per family” plan that mimics the policy in China. The Responsible Parenthood and Popu­lation Management Act of 2005 (HB 3773) would officially enshrine two chil­dren as the proper family size in [...]

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