Recent Commentaries

Featured image for “A Better Way to Honor Lincoln”
A Better Way to Honor Lincoln
What do we not know about Lincoln that historians and authors think we should know about the much favored 16th president? Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review offered reviews of three new books. How many books, would you imagine, have been written about Lincoln? According to the website, The Inquisitr (yes, that’s the way they spell it), “the people...
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February 16, 2015
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The Ethical Take
The E.T. hasn’t been around for awhile. So, let’s get started. The Two-fer – Brian Williams out for six-months without pay; Jon Stewart says adios to The Daily Show. While an internal investigation continues into how NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams misled the public with a story about how the helicopter in which he was travelling in Iraq came...
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February 12, 2015
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Walking Back the Age of Reason
The Age of Reason, (aka, the Enlightenment), must have been a remarkable time to live in – to challenge the conventional wisdom that relied on the traditional forms of authority, and instead, stress analysis, individualism and reason. Can you imagine having discussions on the issues of the day with the likes of Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant...
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February 9, 2015
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One Word: Preventable
Ever since Sunday’s incredible and unpredictable end to this year’s Super Bowl, talk has been circulating across the media. Let’s go to NFL.com columnist Mike Silver: “Seattle was 1 yard away from securing a second consecutive championship — but instead of handing the rock to Marshawn Lynch, the most powerful goal-line runner in football, [Seattle Coach Pete] Carroll called a...
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February 4, 2015
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Dartmouth: Working Toward a New Standard
In a big step to change the culture of misconduct on its campus, Dartmouth College President Philip J. Hanlon announced last Thursday, that it would ban hard liquor on campus. “The measures Dr. Hanlon announced Thursday in a speech on campus had been expected and were based largely on the work of a panel he created nine months ago to...
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February 2, 2015
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I Don’t Want to Hear About It!
Having dinner at my favorite local restaurant recently, I’m scanning the menu when a server recognizes me as a fellow Boston fan. She approaches the table and shouts, “Go Patriots!” She then remembers what I do and quickly adds, “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT!” Completely nonplussed, I ask, “Hear about what?” “The deflated balls,” she says. “I don’t...
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January 30, 2015
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One Survivor’s Story
Reading about the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp from World War II, reminded me of my own experience in visiting Dachau, the first of those camps. I was part of a small group of high school students visiting countries throughout Europe. On a day free from scheduled sightseeing in Munich, Germany, I took a...
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January 28, 2015
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My Joe Franklin Story
Since the death of New York radio personality and TV talk show host, Joe Franklin last Saturday in Manhattan at 88 years of age, everyone’s been telling their own Joe Franklin story. This is mine. It’s 1996, I’m on a book tour for my first book, The Lone Ranger’s Code of the West (An Action-Packed Adventure in Values and Ethics...
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January 26, 2015
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They’re Thugs not Muslims
According to the Pew Research Center (Aug. 24, 2010), “The public continues to express conflicted views of Islam. Favorable opinions of Islam have declined since 2005, but there has been virtually no change over the past year in the proportion of Americans saying that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence. As was the case a year...
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January 23, 2015
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Remembering Three
Last week, the Associated Press reported (Jan. 11), that two members of the famed 100th Fighter Squadron also known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died on the same day. Lifelong friends, Joseph Shambrey and Clarence Huntley (pictured), enlisted in 1942 and were shipped overseas to Italy in 1944. Both were mechanics who kept the planes flying. “Huntley,” the AP writes, “serviced...
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January 20, 2015

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