Opinion Forum

“The Vampire Diaries”

May 31st, 2009

I’ve had an interest lately in vampire books. (“Twilight” got me into that!) My grandma told me about a series called “The Vampire Diaries.” There are five books in the series. She said she read them when she was younger and said they were really good. So, I got the series and started reading them. The [...]

Articles written by Amber
Tags: literature
Categories: Arts, Life | Comments (2) | Home

Your Tax Dollars at Work

May 30th, 2009

A Tennessee man, Desmond Hatchett, 29, has 20 or 21 children. He’s not sure of the exact number. That’s with 11 or more different women. He’s not sure. Apparently, some of them were dumb enough to keep coming back for more. Kids, that is. His youngest is a newborn; the oldest is 11. Hatchett can’t [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Law, welfare
Categories: Life, News, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

Lessons

May 29th, 2009

Inspiration and knowledge can sometimes come from the most unexpected places. Several people who influenced my life did it because their problems played on my sympathies. The very fact of my dealing with them caused me to pause and consider what it would be like to trade places with them. The Taylor brothers are an example of [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: children, special education
Categories: Life | Comments (3) | Home

Life Without Parole for Juveniles?

May 28th, 2009

During the Supreme Court’s next term (begins the first Monday in October) the cases of two juveniles who have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole will be heard by the Justices. The two then juveniles are now adults. One, Joe Sullivan, was sentenced at the age of 13 for raping [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: juvenile, Law, life sentence
Categories: Life, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

The Sotomayor Nomination

May 27th, 2009

President Obama has apparently decided that Sonia Sotomayor is the best-qualified non-white female in the country to serve as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City, has a long and well-documented career as a jurist. By all accounts, [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Senate, Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (14) | Home

Repeal the 17th Amendment

May 26th, 2009

Does it strike no one else as odd that we have what amounts to two Houses of Representatives? Does it strike no one else as odd that with two (unequal) Houses that even the least populated states get the same representation in the Senate? Why would the framers have done something so redundant when nearly [...]

Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: Law, Senate, U.S. Constitution
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (9) | Home

Memorial Day

May 24th, 2009

By Tom Carter Memorial Day, once called Decoration Day, is an observance that began spontaneously after the Civil War. People visited the graves of those killed in the war and left flowers in their memory. In the years that followed, it slowly became a national day of observance in honor of the fallen in all [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Memorial Day
Categories: Life, Military | Comments (2) | Home

Paglia on Talk Radio and Culture

May 23rd, 2009

As anyone who frequently reads Opinion Forum knows, Camille Paglia is one of my favorite columnists and one of my favorite people. Her only on-line presence is at Salon.com, where she writes a monthly column. Each column addresses a variety of issues, with her witty and insightful commentary putting meat on the bones. In this month’s column, [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Obama, Paglia, talk radio
Categories: Arts, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

A Dog Named Snooks

May 22nd, 2009

While age doesn’t always bring wisdom, it brings understanding. However, you might argue that they are one and the same. Things have affected my life that only became apparent as I aged. I was born and lived part of my childhood in very rural Walker County, Alabama—a piece of country that is truly not close to [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: hunting dog, rural life
Categories: Life | Comments (2) | Home

The Catholic Paradox

May 21st, 2009

An excerpt from a report today in the Philadelphia Inquirer: For more than a half century, thousands of children in church-run orphanages and reform schools in Ireland were severely abused by priests and nuns, a government commission said yesterday in the first official accounting of a scandal that has wrenched the deeply Roman Catholic nation. [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: Catholic Church, child abuse, Ireland
Categories: Life, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Stupid Laws Have Tragic Consequences

May 21st, 2009

They had been together for 18 years and had three adopted children, but neither that fact nor the legal documentation presented to the hospital (living wills, advanced directives, and power-of-attorney documents) was sufficient to allow 39-year-old Lisa Pond to have her family at her bedside when she was dying at the Ryder Trauma Center at [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: gay marriage, gay rights
Categories: Life, News, Politics | Comments (17) | Home

Higher Taxes, Negative Returns

May 20th, 2009

A recent column in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal discusses a fundamental problem of raising taxes. People are rational actors, and beyond a certain point, higher taxes result in their voting with their feet. They move elsewhere, to places where taxes are perceived to be more reasonable. Everyone doesn’t react this way, of course. But [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: economy, taxes
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Revive the Civilian Conservation Corps

May 19th, 2009

By Jan Barry Faced with millions of Americans out of work, including an army of roughly 154,000 homeless military veterans seeking shelter every night, President Obama and Congress should quickly revive one of the most successful government actions during the Great Depression. That action was creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which the Roosevelt administration [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps
Categories: Economics, History, Politics | Comments (9) | Home

Parental or Government Rights?

May 18th, 2009

A disturbing case of parental neglect (or perhaps parental rights) has arisen in Minnesota; the report is in the Digital Journal. Daniel Hauser is 13 years old, he is now in 5th grade (three years behind), but he cannot recognize the simplest written word — Daniel is illiterate. Daniel also has cancer. Daniel was diagnosed [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: Law, Parental rights, religion
Categories: Life, News | Comments (15) | Home

Obama and Netanyahu

May 17th, 2009

On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, will have his first face-to-face meeting with Barack Obama since he became president. When these two leaders meet at the White House, there’s likely to be some head-knocking, at least behind closed doors. President Obama’s policies regarding Israel and the Middle East are thin and contradictory. The first red [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Iran, Netanyahu, Obama, two-state
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

A Change of Pace

May 17th, 2009

Near the end of last month my son and I drove down to the part of Alabama where I was born and spent part of my childhood. I say part of my childhood because as a kid I got to see a lot of this country. Alabama to California back to Alabama then finally to [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: memories
Categories: Life | Comments (3) | Home

Those Hateful Hate Crimes

May 16th, 2009

A small article in a recent USA Today mentioned that, on the previous day, the State of Maryland added homeless people to their growing list of people who are protected under hate crimes legislation. What this means is, if you commit a crime against a homeless person because they are homeless or a crime against a [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: hate crimes, Law
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (11) | Home

Guns and Waffles

May 16th, 2009

By Tom Carter As I made clear in Gun Control and Guns Are Not the Answer, I strongly favor strict federal gun control laws, including prohibition of private possession of handguns. It would be hard to find a better example of the insanity of having so many guns in the hands of so many people [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: gun control, Law
Categories: Humor, Politics | Comments (32) | Home

Memorial Day 2009

May 15th, 2009

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear” — Mark Twain On Monday, May 25th, America will be celebrating Memorial Day. What Memorial Day means to the majority of Americans is simply a day off from work (for many a paid day off), outdoor BarBQs, the end of another school year, [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: Decoration Day, Memorial Day, Poppy Day
Categories: Life, Military | Comments (1) | Home

Global Climate Change

May 14th, 2009

It seems I may have been a bit premature in agreeing with a respondent to my previous assertions regarding global warming. The one and only purpose of developing scientific theories, and then subsequently vetting them, is to use them as predictive tools. As I said about a month ago, the models we are using fail [...]

Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: global cooling, global warming, Science
Categories: Life, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

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