The world’s richest large country, the city on a hill, seems to be coming apart. —The Economist(6/14/18) In 2011 British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett released the second edition of their book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes…
Sexually transmitted diseases at all-time high
The Centers for Disease Control has just released preliminary data on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and they show a dramatic increase in infections over four years. In 2017, there were 2.3 million new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, more…
An update on unions in higher education
The advance of higher education unions has generally stalled at about 375,000 faculty—21 percent of private schools and 35 percent of public colleges and universities. This significant movement has leveled off primarily because 23 states still do not allow collective…
Lost in a world of red and green
As I read about the fires raging across the western states, I’m reminded of my three years on “hot shot” crews in the late 1960s. One June day on Oregon’s Rogue River National Forest our crew was digging a practice…
Iran vs. North Korea: Obama Got a Better Deal
There is unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive us. —current U.S. intelligence official on North Korea Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile pledges are about as disposable as toilet paper. —Harry Kazianis of Fox News Just as Trump abandoned a…
Judge rules family separations “brutal and offensive”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has quoted the Bible in support of his No Tolerance and Family Separation policies, but this passage undermines his case entirely: “When a stranger sojourns in your land, you shall do him no wrong. The stranger…
The Dissolution of the Iberian Religious Harmony
I’m just back from a one-month trip to Portugal, Spain and Morocco, and I was reminded, primarily because of the spectacular Islamic architecture, about the relative peace among the Jews, Christians and Muslims in this area from during the 8th-13th…
Morocco makes progress — politically, culturally and economically
Known as the “Door to the Sahara Desert,” Morocco and its great cities Casablanca, Tangier, and Marrakesh symbolize everything exotic about Arabic culture. The films “Gladiator,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Black Hawk Down,” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” were shot…
Portugal comes back from the economic brink
Trump boasts about the nation’s economic recovery, but during his first year the economy grew only 2.3 percent. The average for Obama, as he brought the nation out of the Great Recession, was 2.2 percent. In 2017 growth for those…
Donald Trump vs. Barack Obama: A Question of Character
Trump is normalizing all this; he is, to borrow a phrase, “defining deviancy down.” —Bret Stephens, conservative columnist Disorder, chaos, instability, uncertainty, intemperate statements are not conservative virtues in my opinion. —GOP Congressman Charlie Dent These are soulless people working…