This column comes out between Christmas and New Year’s, and because our daughter is home and I’m enjoying relaxed holidays with her, this will be mostly a re-run from past holiday writing. Our daughter, by the way, works for the Department of Justice and is unconcerned about the shutdown. It seems that DOJ has a separate pile of money from fines that criminals pay, so the work goes on. She telecommuted a bit while here and plans to be back in the office by Monday, even though it is New Year’s Eve. It’s possible that the Grinch will parole the people he considered to be his personal indentured servants on New Years’ Eve, but her plane reservations are set. Practical matters like that don’t occur to the guys at the top.  Read More 

• Have you been watching the new “Murphy Brown?” It’s excellent, even better than it was back in the 1980s. The point I want to ponder, though, is that last week’s version included the fact that our war in Afghanistan has gone on for seventeen years. That’s far, far longer than any war in American history. We still risk soldiers’ lives there despite having achieved our ostensible objective of capturing Osama bin Laden. That happened under President Obama, however, so it doesn’t count.  Read More 

I know I promised last week to return to the Civil War memoirs that some readers have enjoyed, but first some timely talk on transportation. I got all gussied up for the Authors Guild holiday party in South St. Pete, and because it was from 6-8 PM, I carefully considered what route to take. I never drive at rush hour if that can be avoided, and I didn’t really grasp how bad it is out there. But I did decide that from my East Hillsborough home, it would make more sense to sneak up on the Pinellas peninsula from the south, rather than taking I-275 through downtown Tampa, the Howard Frankenstein, and almost all of Pinellas. I left at 5:00, thinking an hour would be enough time, and maybe the Sunshine Skyway would be pretty at sunset.  Read More 

I’ve been thinking about California, and not just because of the wildfires. I did have extended family long ago in Paradise, the ironically named town that literally was wiped out of existence as residents died horrifying deaths. I’ve come up with a suggestion for people who live with the danger of wildfire: build storm cellars. In the tornado ally of the Midwest, people who don’t have basements install underground storm cellars – a small concrete space below the land where they can hide while tornadoes rage above. Millions of people can testify that a storm cellar saved their lives, and they aren’t terribly expensive. California could encourage that: people would just stay in their bunkers while the fire quickly burns over them.  Read More 

You might remember that last week, I wrote about things that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could do that would cost very little money and yet be a tremendous boon for our nation. Thus I was very pleased to see that she and other Democrats are working on House Bill # 1, which will be the first proposed law filed next January. Because of the complicated legalese required, HB #1 still is a work in progress – but its chief aims are clear:  Read More 

I was doing what I usually do late on Wednesdays, driving home from bridge and listening to “Marketplace” on WUSF. This was the day after the election, and its business-oriented commentators hadn’t quite absorbed that Trump lost, but they did understand that Democrats won the House. The immediate question posed was what can Congress do that doesn’t increase the national debt? Then they went on to remind listeners that the debt has risen precipitously since Republicans took total power – something they pretty much ignored before the election.  Read More 

I’m not going to write much about our historic election because I’m tired of thinking about it and suspect that you are, too. Of course I’ll have more to say later, but for now mainly this: I never want to hear another negative word about Nancy Pelosi. At age 77, she is well-acquainted with the country’s 435 House districts. She targeted carefully and recruited a lot of strong women, liberal veterans, and racial minorities – and won the US House by a large margin. Many victories across the nation set precedents, with more women in Congress than ever before and more minorities, including firsts for Native Americans. Voters also chose to get rid of some of the worst bad guys, including vote-suppressor-in-chief, Kansas’ Kris Kobach and Vladimir Putin’s best pal in Congress, California’s Dana Rohrbacher.  Read More 

LaGaceta, our dear local weekly run by the Manteiga family, often reminds me of my youth in Minnesota. The Jasper Journal was a weekly run by the Davidson family, and they lived just three houses away from ours on the top floor of a solid quartz building. The newspaper’s office and print shop were on the first floor, with the press and mailing-label equipment down in the basement. I was in the fourth or fifth grade when I began going there on Thursday afternoons, never doubting that my childish presence was helpful to the four-member staff. I think they even paid me a dime a day.  Read More 

By the time you read this, the 2018 midterm elections will be over. I’ve made my predictions about this being a sea change in American history, with the election of unprecedented numbers of Democratic women, and won’t readdress that. I could be wrong – I was with the Kavanaugh nomination – but I think enough progressive people are sufficiently committed to change that this year will signal the end of the white patriarchs who have reigned in Washington since the nation began. Women and racial minorities are going to prove themselves the true majority. I think.  Read More 

Of the many dangers represented by the tyrant in the White House, his poisoning of the free press is the most frightening. The “fake news” mantra was bad enough, as it encouraged his disciplines to believe in him instead of demonstrated facts. But now he has moved beyond even that, goading his thugs literally to attack reporters. You probably saw the video of him in Montana, praising a Republican congressman who assaulted a reporter. “Any kind of guy who can do a body slam,” he shouted, “that’s my kind of guy.” If a Democrat said that, he would be pilloried as inciting a riot.  Read More