Recent Commentaries

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Want to Change the World?
True story, every morning, I make the bed. (I also wash my own laundry but that’s another story.) Over the years, my wife has occasionally mentioned this to others at social functions, as if performing such tasks was due to some anomalous male genetic mutation. (The shocking truth is, most men routinely have made their beds and other chores before...
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June 12, 2017
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Maddi Runkles
“…if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom…” – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter Maddi Runkles, an 18-year-old high school student with a 4.0 grade average, was not allowed to attend the graduation ceremony with her class in Hagerstown, Maryland, because she is pregnant. Technically, according to a statement to parents...
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June 9, 2017
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A Blind Eye?
Graham Spanier, the former president of Penn State University, was found guilty last March of endangering the welfare of a child in the Jerry Sandusky sex assault case. In March, I wrote about my time at Penn State where I spoke on ethics to a variety of students, administrators, alumni and… as it turned out, then-President Spanier. Spanier and I...
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June 7, 2017
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What’s Your Tribe?
With all the fractiousness in the country – Right, Left, Alt-Right, Democrat, Republican, North, South, East, West, up, down – the nation is clearly living through challenging times. How do we relate to one another with such diverse beliefs, cultures and goals? How can we learn to listen more and bark less? John Zogby’s 2016 book, We Are Many, We...
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June 5, 2017
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Make America Covfefe Again!
Whenever Press Secretary Sean Spicer is asked to explain one of President Trump’s tweets, he responds, “The president’s tweet speaks for itself.” When Spicer was asked what the president meant by “covfefe,” Spicer replied, “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.” It now seems perfectly clear that Spicer, and that very “small group” were...
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June 2, 2017
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“My Life Must Stand for Something”
In a moving commentary in Monday’s (May 29), New York Times, Documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick reflect on their ten-year research detailed in an upcoming documentary, The Vietnam War. “For more than a generation,” Burns and Novick write, “instead of forging a path to reconciliation, we have allowed the wounds the war inflicted on our nation, our politics and...
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May 31, 2017
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Reflecting on Kennedy
Today would have been the 100th birthday of John F. Kennedy. While he served less than three years as the nation’s 35th president, more books have been written about Kennedy – 62,000 – than any president in the last 152 years, (Lincoln comes in first with 111,000; Washington, second with 83,000). I have 31 books on Kennedy in my own...
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May 29, 2017
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Standards, What Standards?
Fox News executives should issue the following statement: “Fox News is calling for a total and complete shutdown of inaccurate and false stories coming from Sean Hannity until Fox representatives can figure out what the HELL is going on!” P.S. – They have, sort of. Conspiracy theories have bounced around popular culture and politics since the birth of the nation....
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May 26, 2017
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Alex Jones Recants? Not so Fast
“I’m choosing this as a battle. On this I will stand. I will win, or I will die, I’m not backing down. I’m never giving up. I love this.” – Alex Jones, InfoWars Well, for Jones, the battle not only didn’t last long, but he didn’t die, either. Earlier this month, Jones’s “war” with Chobani yogurt maker Hamdi Ulukaya, a...
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May 23, 2017
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The Witch Doctor of Truth
President Trump must’ve missed CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360  the other night when Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz recommended that the president get a personal lawyer and “zip it! …stop tweeting… stop talking…” On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – an oasis of rationality – announced the appointment of Robert Muller as special counsel to investigate the possibility of complicity...
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May 19, 2017

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