GUN CONTROL HAS BEEN MUCH IN THE NEWS LATELY, and I thought I’d share some thoughts about it. If this column seems a bit muddled or indecisive, it’s not an accident — it reflects some real ambivalence I have about this. Some of that ambivalence comes from the makeup of my extended family. Mom’s side […]

“… we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own choices about her health. I want you to know you’ve got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way. Thank you Planned Parenthood, God bless you.” — President Obama, April 26, 2013. WOMEN’S […]

THERE IS A CONCEIT AMONG THE MANAGEMENT CLASS — particularly members of that class who style themselves as left-of-center — that if we just send millions of former workers from our devastated manufacturing sector to college so they can become website designers or something, that will make up for destroying the industries that formerly provided […]

AS MANY BENICIA RESIDENTS PLAN for the upcoming annual Relay for Life event, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, I’d like to pose a question: “Do the participants know where the money goes?” In an article in last year’s Benicia Herald titled “First Street ribbons mean Relay approaches,” we learn that the money goes […]

DURING HIS 2013 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, Barack Obama used the phrase “tonight, I …” at least eight different times to tell everybody all the wonderful things he was doing to make America a happier, healthier and smarter place to live. He did admit to one little problem early in his speech when he […]

I CONFESS TO A MAJOR WRITING BLOCK. For a number of days now, no matter how urgent are several of the national issues that engage me and upon which I have begun writing, my mind takes me back to a story that haunts me. I doubt that I am alone in this. The story, which […]

THOMAS FRANK, AUTHOR OF THE LANDMARK 2004 BOOK, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” has said that, for a purportedly rightist party, Republicans talk an awful lot about class resentment — but in a strangely inverted way, defining elites in terms of cultural preferences: “Volvo-driving, Latte-sipping, liberal snobs in their big cities, looking down their noses […]

I WATCHED THE OCCUPY PROTESTS A COUPLE YEARS AGO WITH INTEREST, and for a while I was extremely gratified at their success. They succeeded in changing the subject from “we must cut the deficit immediately and at all costs” (which is economic idiocy — the short-term problem is a lack of demand; the long-term problem […]

“The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.” — Upton Sinclair, 1951 FEW WORDS MAKE […]

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE IN THE THREE OR FOUR YEARS I have been writing this column, I may have noted my own wounding and departure from combat in World War II. But on the eve of the 68th “anniversary” of that April 13 occasion, and the prior related experience of touching upon the incredible sickness […]