Recent Personalities Commentaries

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Dear Cam, What Happened on Sunday?
What does it take to get to the Super Bowl, Cam? A lot of hard work, time, sacrifice and… something else. However, during the post-game media interview following last Sunday’s Super Bowl, you were beyond stoic. You sat, for all of 7 minutes, with a hoodie pulled tight around your head, no eye contact, head down at times, barely answering...
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February 10, 2016
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The Ethical Take
The Take had quite a range of recent stories to choose from. The Weasel – Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager and head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, smiled and smirked his way through his testimony before Congress last week regarding questions related to securities fraud. To watch Shkreli’s testimony is to watch a ludicrous stream of redundant answers to questions...
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February 8, 2016
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Fact-Checking: Fact v. Friction
Fact-checking isn’t a perfect discipline, but it has become a somewhat reliable tool for individuals who wish to separate the absurd from the reasonable in political rhetoric. On January 27 (Why do People Ignore Facts?), regarding presidential candidate Donald Trump I wrote, “If 77 percent of what comes out of Trump’s mouth on the stump is patently false, why do...
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February 3, 2016
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Fact-Checking a Reader
(Note: This commentary was written and posted in January, 2016. It was based on then-candidate Trump’s statement of December 7, 2015, calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” as pointed out in the 12th paragraph, below. Comments to this post are now closed.)...
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January 20, 2016
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That Interview
“Mission accomplished: We have him.” No sooner had Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto tweeted that message to Mexico’s citizens announcing the recapture of Joaquin Guzmán Loera, than the other shoe dropped… Rolling Stone magazine published an interview with “El Chapo,” The El Chapo, the notorious drug kingpin of the Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel. Getting an interview like this is akin...
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January 13, 2016
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Should Germany publish Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”?
In 1925 and ’26, Adolf Hitler published (in two parts, no less) an autobiography of sorts. While the title translates as “My Struggle,” the real substance behind the work has more to do with Hitler’s political ideology than anything else. His central thesis being “the Jewish peril,” Hitler believed in a Jewish conspiracy to expand global leadership. While the question...
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January 11, 2016
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The Ethical Take
In this first month of a new year, The Take examines a few stories from the sane… to the inane. Where’s Colin!? — Former Joint Chiefs Chairman and Secretary of State Colin Powell has been conspicuously absent from all the activities surrounding the GOP presidential candidates. I kept wondering, what’s his take on all this. Wonder no more. According to...
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January 8, 2016
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The Fierce Urgency of Now
Before President Obama held a press conference Tuesday to announce that he was signing executive orders to help reduce gun violence, two Brooklyn New York legislators, Senator Roxanne Persaud and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, were threatened by America’s 1st Freedom, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association. Why? In a story reported by The New York Daily News (Jan. 5),...
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January 6, 2016
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Notables and Quotables of 2015
If a year can be summarized with one word it might be entitlement: entitled to ignore the facts; entitled to change the law in order to suit your own religious beliefs; entitled to own assault weapon(s) and high-capacity magazines; entitled to ban all individuals of a particular religion from entry into the U.S. Let’s dispense with the easy ones first....
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December 28, 2015
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The Message of 2015
To whom do you turn in the midst of crisis? Who has the requisite wisdom to lessen your doubts, your fears and anxieties? Of all the speeches given in 2015, none comes close to that of Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics. During the five days that Francis visited the United States, he was welcomed with warmth...
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December 24, 2015