Recent Commentaries

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Who Should Decide?
Charlie Gard is only 11 months old, but his short life has stirred a controversy concerning the ethical limits of medicine. Charlie has a rare, genetic and incurable disease that has now involved doctors, three British courts, the European Court of Human Rights, as well as hundreds of thousands of petitioners, including Pope Francis and President Trump. The bottom line...
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July 21, 2017
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Character
Everything action we take, large or small, has the potential to reveal character. While most of my commentaries have involved weightier issues such as vaccinations, the death penalty, dishonesty, fraud and abuse, smaller acts take place every day that demonstrate who we are and what we stand for. A personal account by Mike Kerrigan in The Wall Street Journal (July...
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July 19, 2017
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Selfless
In the early evening hours of October 25, 2007 in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, Army Staff Sargent Salvatore Giunta and seven troops were returning to camp when they were ambushed by Taliban fighters from all directions. “There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky,” Giunta said. “A wall of bullets at every one at the same time...
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July 17, 2017
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An Important Step
“I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” – Ronald Reagan “For the first time in the seven-decade effort to avert a nuclear war,” The New...
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July 14, 2017
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Jack’s Back!
In 2005, New York Times Magazine described him this way: “ ‘Can you smell money?!?!?!” Jack Abramoff wrote. “The scent of money was coming from the Saginaw Chippewa, the owners of the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort — a $400-million-a-year enterprise in Mt. Pleasant, Mich. Abramoff and his informal business partner, Michael Scanlon, an independent public-relations consultant who had been...
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July 12, 2017
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The Know-Nothings*
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  – George Santayana Recently, I received an e-mail from a reader to a 2016 commentary (Fact-Checking a Reader) I wrote regarding candidate-Trump’s original statement calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of all Muslims entering the United States. “I think if Trump would have left out the word Muslim,”...
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July 10, 2017
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A Political Hero Remembered
Political heroes are rare. The last genuine political hero, Senator Philip S. Hart, is remembered on the front of an office building in Washington, D.C. as: “A man of incorruptible integrity and personal courage strengthened by inner grace and outer gentleness…. His humility and ethics earned him his place as the conscience of the Senate.” Last Friday (June 30), another...
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July 7, 2017
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Et Tu, Peggy, Et Tu?
There is no nice way to say it: I am tired of political leadership in Washington using words like “inappropriate,” “inconsistent,” a “distraction,” and “un-presidential” to describe what my parents, grandparents, teachers, religious leaders, and most anyone with common sense would otherwise call, WRONG! To state the obvious: we have a 71-year-old president whose Twitter rants demonstrate that he is...
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July 5, 2017
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What We Stand For
Have you ever tried handwriting the entire text of the U.S. Constitution? “On Inauguration Day, [artist Morgan O’Hara] went to the [New York Public] library with a small suitcase of pens, a few Sharpies, papers and copies of the Constitution. I brought old notebooks, half-used drawing pads and loose sheets to share with anyone who might show up. I began...
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July 3, 2017
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Really, Sarah, Really?
Last Friday, CNN retracted a story that had appeared on its website incorrectly linking Trump confident and hedge-fund manager Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund supposedly under investigation by the Senate. On Tuesday, (June 27), White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wasted no time in calling this to the attention of all media at the (sometimes) daily...
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June 30, 2017

Read Some of the Most Recent Articles
The Latest... And Often Greatest
When Political Identity Replaces Ethical Judgment
The political and cultural landscape has become a minefield of conflicting beliefs, many now rooted less in public policy than in personal identity. One of...
Principles Matter.
A few nights ago, I was watching The Way We Were, a film I’ve seen more times than I can count. This time, a single...
All the President’s Men 2.0
“Politics had infiltrated every corner of government—a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House.” —Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s...
The Threat to November Is Already Here
“Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”—George Washington’s...
Jon Ossoff and the Conscience of Atticus Finch
I’ve written about Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff before, but after watching his questioning of Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence (DNI),...
Hearts and Minds
There’s a moment in Cool Hand Luke when Luke, played by Paul Newman, is returned to a prison camp after escaping. Determined to break his...