Scandal, political unrest, uncertainty. Henry Brooks Adams, an American journalist, was the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams. His specialty was exposing political corruption in the late 19th century, and according to historian David McCullough, Henry believed the country was indeed, going to hell in a hand basket. “They went at each other on the floor...

It was forty-five years ago, last week that we lost Robert F. Kennedy – June 6, 1968. It’s difficult to describe to a younger generation the impact the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy had on so many of us. I was in my first year of college and what captured my interest in this man was something that...

I wasn’t born when Jackie Robinson first stepped onto a major league baseball field on this day sixty-six years ago, breaking the color barrier. Growing up, for the most part, in Southern California, I was already accustomed to integration. It was a given. From the first moment I saw Chavez Ravine in 1962, I discovered a world where sunshine and...

In 1951, nuclear testing continued with a 1-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat near Las Vegas, Nevada. President Harry Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command in the Far East. Senator Estes Kefauver headed a Senate committee investigating interstate crime, and… …on one bright and shining day in June, John Nelson Baldwin, graduating from Pelham Memorial High School in...

In his book on George Washington, Richard Brookhiser writes that “all modern manners in the western world were originally aristocratic. Courtesy meant behavior appropriate to a court; chivalry comes from chevalier – a knight. Yet Washington was to dedicate himself to freeing America from a court’s control. “Could manners survive the operation? Without realizing it, the Jesuits who wrote them,...

Second, in a series of two profiles, is about former U.S. Representative, Senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern. This first appeared in the National Catholic Reporter December 31, 2012. On the Wednesday afternoon in early November 1972 after his defeat the day before by Richard Nixon for the presidency, George McGovern and his wife Eleanor arrived at Washington’s National...

While I’m away in New Hampshire, good friend and colleague, Colman McCarthy has been generous to share a couple of profiles. This first, discussing folk singer Woody Guthrie appeared on the 100 anniversary of the singer’s birth on October 13, 2012 in the National Catholic Reporter. For a few moments in mid-October, the nation [had] a chance to enjoy a...

There was a moment, listening to Dennis Haines’s story, that shook me. It began one life-changing night in December, 1968 in Viet Nam as first told by his buddy John Miller. “Our mission was to encircle a village. We called it a cordon. Our squad, moved farther down the road to a point where there was a pathway that led...

Former Texas Representative (D) Jack Brooks died this week. Brooks led Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in his home district of Texas. After Kennedy’s assassination, he was present for the swearing-in of Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One (just behind Jackie Kennedy on the right). Brooks not only helped write Kennedy’s signature Civil Rights Act, he was one of...

Every year the Gallup organization asks a cross-section of Americans to rate “the perceived honesty and ethical standards” of various professions. As expected, nurses, pharmacists and medical doctors have topped the list at 85%, 75% and 70% respectively in 2012. “Six medical professional categories were included in this year’s update,” Gallup writes. “Nurses’ high rating this is not unexpected; they...