“Sparky”… now that’s a name that could only be tagged to a baseball player, except he didn’t play the game, he managed it. Anderson died last week at 76. “Sparky was, by far, the best manager I ever played for,” saidCincinnati Reds Pete Rose. “He understood people better than anyone I ever met. His players loved him, he loved his players,...

“I still believe that the mildest and most obscure of Americans can be rescued from oblivion by good luck, sudden changes in fortune, sudden encounters with heroes. I believe it because I lived it.” Those words come from Ted Sorensen, advisor, counselor and speechwriter for President John Kennedy.  Sorensen died Sunday at the age of 82. In 1961, I clearly...

Of course, Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity had plenty of comedy. That’s the cable channel’s stock-in-trade. But it offered something more, something that’s been missing from all the political posturing, bullying and noise. It offered an image of thousands coming together around a call for civility and reasonable debate. At the end of three hours of music and arch political humor...

The Juan Williams matter brings up a topic that’s important to explore – the role of an ombudsman. Alicia Shepard is NPR’s Ombudsman, and according to her bio, “Shepard was appointed… in October 2007. In 2000, NPR was the first U.S. broadcast news organization to create an Ombudsman position. “In this role,” NPR writes “Shepard serves as the public’s representative, and is responsible for bringing transparency...

There’s a very old fable of unknown origin that goes something like this… A scorpion comes upon a river and asks a friendly frog for a ride to the other side. The frog laughs and says something like, “Are you nuts? You’re a scorpion. You’ll sting me!” The scorpion replies, “Why would I do that? If I sting you, we’ll...

Mark that date in your iPhone calendar, people. Yes, right now! On October 30, 2010 an event of biblical proportions will…change… history! (No, not that Event, that’s on NBC.) I’m talking about an event that’s bigger than Lincoln, yes; bigger than Jefferson, yes; even bigger than Washington, himself! Throughout history, America has witnessed many great Americans coming together in solidarity to support American virtues,...

Ann Coulter never met an incongruity or contradiction she didn’t embrace. In her 2002 book Slander, the conservative commentator rails against The New York Times for its misinformation and wanton liberal bias on 198 of the book’s 261 pages. “The Times regularly interprets standard Republican positions as fanatical, religiously based racist hate crimes,” Coulter writes. But take a close look at the top of the...

That’s how Glenn Beck described himself on Fox and Friends (Aug. 29) in his kind-of, sort-of take-back of calling President Obama “a racist,” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people,” on that same program last year. Beck’s trenchant self-analysis comes more than a year later and a day after his evangelistic “Restoring Honor” revival on the steps of the Lincoln...

Of course the biggest aspect to the whole BP crisis circles back to our dependence – not just on foreign oil – but oil… period. It’s the Jabba the Hut the media, in all their special reports on BP, doesn’t talk about. Anyone remember the oil crisis in the 70s?  Of course not.  That was 40 years ago. What began as anger from all...

Yesterday, David Krieger offered a persuasive argument to the question, “Won’t the abolition of nuclear weapons leave the United States vulnerable?” I followed up with some questions of my own. Here are David’s responses. Q: “How do we convince irrational leaders to sign on to a plan to give up nuclear weapons?” Krieger: “These leaders may appear irrational, but their...