Posted November 20, 2025in Morain
Thanksgiving gets short shrift these days. The Christmas commercialism colossus, burgeoning every year, now occupies a super-sized chunk of November that used to be the province of the Thanksgiving holiday. Christmas backloads ever-farther into autumn, diverting attention from what once was an appropriate pause for gratitude between harvest and the
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Posted November 13, 2025in Morain
By the time you read this column, it may be irrelevant. I hope so. But I doubt it. Assuming the federal government is still partially shut down by the column’s publication on Thursday, November 13, we will have endured it for 44 days, a month and a half since it
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Posted November 06, 2025in Morain
Kathy and I live in an old house in Jefferson (apparent construction year 1901). It’s the house my parents bought in 1944, and it was my childhood home. My folks sold it about 28 years later and moved some 20 miles south to their new home on Lake Panorama. The
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Posted October 30, 2025in Morain
When ideology takes top priority, America’s world leadership is in jeopardy. The Trump administration’s threats to academic freedom at leading American universities could slow the pace of the nation’s scientific research and subsequent entrepreneurial development of what that research turns up. Our race to stay ahead of China, for instance,
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Posted October 16, 2025in Morain
As I write this column on Sunday, October 12, the United States government is still shut down. Federal employee are not getting paid. No, wait, that’s not quite true. MOST federal employees are not getting paid. Who’s still receiving a paycheck? That would be President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance,
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Posted October 09, 2025in Morain
Kathy and I returned last Friday from three days in the Black Hills, communing with two of my graduate school former housemates and their spouses. It’s a reunion that takes place somewhere in the U.S. on an irregular basis, always enjoyable and nostalgic. Both housemates are professors emeriti, one from
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Posted September 25, 2025in Morain
Last March, six months ago, Congress averted an impending federal government shutdown by reaching a bipartisan compromise, which extended the government funding deadline by six months, to the end of September. Time passes, and we’re approaching the new deadline. By now a functional Congress would have performed its due diligence
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Posted September 18, 2025in Morain
A CALL FOR RADICAL MODERATION Another political leader killed, and another frustrating challenge on what to say, what to do. Charlie Kirk’s death resurfaces similar tragedies from our American past, both venerable and recent, some wounding, some fatal. It’s not a time for what-ifs, for justification slanders, certainly not for
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Posted September 11, 2025in Morain
Why does Congress even bother to debate an annual budget? Every year members of the federal legislative body spend innumerable hours in committees and on the House and Senate floor debating discretionary appropriations decisions. Intense negotiations sometimes produce some or all of the 12 regular mandatory appropriations bills that designate
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Posted September 04, 2025in Morain
College football is here once again, and fans are geared up to cheer on their treasured favorite(s). What stokes such ferocious lifetime loyalty to a bunch of guys playing a game for a few weeks every fall, and does it say anything meaningful about us? In our family—nuclear, offspring, offspring
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