Over the ricky ticky tinkle of a honky-tonk piano banging out “Buffalo Gals,” Georgia Governor Nathan “what-a” Deal sits down at his desk to sign a new piece of legislation into law. Watching the proceedings, a tall man with a steely-eyed gaze, dressed in black with matching hat quietly watches. “Well, boys,” Deal says, handing out souvenir pens, “Here she is, the Safe...

At the time of his retirement in 2010, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court John Paul Stevens was the oldest Justice then serving and the second-oldest serving in the history of the Court. This excerpt, from his latest book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution first appearing in The Washington Post (Apr. 11), offers both clarity and context...

Last year, NBC News reported that America’s teenagers scoredbelow the international average in math, and only average in science based on a report from a 2012 Program for International Student Assessment. Fortunately, 1,700 science students from around the country did not have time to pay much attention to the study. Each year since 1998, Intel, the computer chip corporation sponsors the Intel Science...

Three stories appearing in last Friday’s (Mar. 7) New York Times grabbed my attention. “An Army judge on Thursday accepted guilty pleas from Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair to misconduct charges, including possession of pornography and inappropriate relationships with female soldiers. But the general, a former deputy commander of American forces in southern Afghanistan, still faces court-martial on charges that...

On January 5 of this year, The Washington Post wrote that “The political network spearheaded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch has expanded into a far-reaching operation of unrivaled complexity, built around a maze of groups that cloaks its donors, according to an analysis of new tax returns and other documents.” So complex and far-reaching are the Koch’s political activities that Wikipedia devotes...

True story: I once asked someone at a social function their opinion of the Koch brothers. Their repy, “I don’t know them, but I’ve been drinking Coke for years!” David and Charles Koch are businessmen/owners of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States. The company was founded by Fred C. Koch, a chemical engineer, who...

That’s the term used to describe undisclosed funds that are used to help pay for an election campaign without the voter knowing who donated the money prior to an election. A report from The Center for Public Integrity (Feb. 27), a non-profit investigative journalism group revealed that “Two of the tightest races for U.S. Senate in 2012 were in Nevada and Arizona....

Ted Nugent is a shameless hate-spewing demagogue. Nugent’s remarks – past, present and more likely future – are not poorly chosen, dumb or inappropriate. They’re dangerously wrong. Last month, Nugent defiantly called the president of the United States “a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel.” This month, Texas attorney general and candidate for governor Gregg Abbott welcomed (that’s right, welcomed) the rocker to his...

Okay, I know it’s early, but I’m heading out of town for the holiday and wanted to get this posted. I also know this was posted prior to the last presidential election, but…hey, it’s about presidents, it’s funny, and I wanted to leave on a high note. So, enjoy! It’s hard to believe that the 2012 presidential campaign is at...

And the Gold medal for keeping the U.S. from another default goes to… House and Senate Republicans for voting for a “clean” debt bill! “The vote to suspend the debt ceiling until mid-March 2015,” The Wall Street Journal reported (Feb. 13), “with no policy measures attached – shows how the House G.O.P. has changed after three bruising years of budget brinkmanship, capped...