Attending a Padres/Dodgers game in San Diego, I’m sitting next to a die-hard Padres fan. Despite my lifelong Dodger fever, we shared laughs, baseball stories and favorite teams: he loved the Yankees; I loved the Red Sox. What makes baseball so compelling is that while both sides want to win, they play on the same field, follow the same rules,...

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. — Rene Descartes, 16th century French Mathematician While I talked about this earlier this month, we need reminders . . . a lot of reminders. Last week was Banned Books Week. It’s hard to imagine an America—a country that places free speech at...

Is there any Rubicon, despicable, illegal or otherwise, that Trump could cross that would change the hearts and minds of loyalists? Fox pundit Sean Hannity asked former president Donald Trump about Top Secret, classified documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago. This was Trump’s response: “If you’re the president of the United States you can declassify just by saying it’s...

The cancer of false conspiracies, lies, and cynicism eating away at the Republic—lies propagated and fed by the former president and his allies—has metastasized to many Republicans running for office in state elections. The New York Times writes, “When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election...

That’s Arizona Republican and Speaker of the House . . . correction, former Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers who had been abruptly shown the door by his own Republican Party after Bowers refused to accede to Donald Trump’s wishes and overturn the will of 3.4 million Arizona voters who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. If his...

Every time another mass shooting occurs, the debate begins again. FOR GUN CONTROL – Nineteen, the number of mass shootings that have occurred since January 1st of this year—68 dead; 69 wounded. AGAINST – “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” FOR – In 2021, Texas passed a gun law that allows those...

     “If there’s one American belief I hold above all others, it’s that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘best’ should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. … As a nation, we’ve been through too many fights to preserve our rights...

Of all the books written by historian David McCullough the book I return to is a compilation of his speeches. The American Spirit offers exactly what its title implies and at this moment, we need a big dose of that spirit more than ever. In a speech to Dartmouth College in 1999, McCullough draws inspiration from a line in the...

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” In the depths of the Revolutionary War, George Washington’s troops struggled with disease, hunger, and defeat. What Washington needed was a...

The country is facing a confluence of alarming events that challenge even the best optimists. Thus far, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has held 8 hearings with testimony from key witnesses. Among them: Capitol police, Justice officials, White House aides, state Republican election officials, a conservative judge, a member of the Oath Keepers whose...