On April 25, faculty experts from Colorado State University were in Washington, DC, to give   Congressional staffers a briefing on natural gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing.  Former Governor Bill Ritter, Jr., who is currently the director of the Center for the New Energy Economy… Read full post »

The headline in the February 21, 2013, edition of the Plaindealer, the local paper published here in Ridgway, Colorado, reads, "Four gun safety bills pass state House of Representatives".  It's short enough to speak for itself without editing or ellipsis, but the real story here/… Read full post »

President Obama's State of the Union Message was both a call to action and a reminder that we still have a long way to go to create "a more perfect union" envisioned in the Preamble to our tattered Constitution. 

Step 1 – Abolish the filibuster

Nothing  only can/… Read full post »

We can't afford to go on letting fake liberals who ask for our money and our votes hide behind empty rhetoric while consorting with the same old paymasters and special interests.  They have enabled Tea Party Republicans and it is clear they intend to continue doing so.  That leaves us, vote/… Read full post »

It's the start of a new year.  We can put the old year behind us now.  Forget all about the disappointments of 2012 and start afresh.

Nelson's been talking to Mother Nature.  Nelson is a close friend fighting a hard battle against a deadly disease.  He's been having a series of very frank conversations with Mother Nature about, well, just about everything, from the origins of the universe to evolution to how and where hom… Read full post »

By Thomas Magstadt

   The Business of America:  Where Is It Now?

In July 2012, the Center for American Progress published a kind of factsheet on the growing practice of "overseas outsourcing".  The article was prompted by a deeply divisive presidential campaign that, among other thin… Read full post »

The key political race in the country every four years is typically the run for the White House, but the historic election of 2012 was different. Massachusetts was at the heart of the difference.

The most important election that year was for a US Senate vacated when… Read full post »

No doubt about it:  If Willard Mitt Romney wins on November 7 it will be a watershed in American history – the first time a candidate and his rich backers clearly bought a presidential election.  No one with a passing familiarity with the facts or a scintilla… Read full post »

Revolutions typically start with a theory and talk and transition into practice and political action.  They almost always end in disaster for the societies they disrupt and the economies they destroy.  That's the story of the French Revolution and Russia's October Revolution, but not the Am… Read full post »

THE ROADS BOTH TAKEN

 By Margaret ("Maggie") Dieringer*

TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A YELLOW WOOD

AND I WAS POISED TO TAKE THEM BOTH

AND BE TWO TRAVELERS, LONG I STOOD

AND LOOKED DOWN ONE AS FAR AS I COULD

TO WHERE… Read full post »

The basic outlines of the “dark knight” massacre in Aurora, Colorado, are now well known.  A 24-year-old medical school dropout named James Egan Holmes acting alone opened fire with an assault rifle in a crowded theater, killing 12 people and wounding 59. 

A lot of good… Read full post »

They wrap themselves in a constitution we were taught to revere, a constitution they secretly hold in contempt.  They are subversives in Armani suits, and they are far more dangerous to the survival of this creaky, old republic than communists and terrorists ever were. 

News that a… Read full post »

The ideal of a free market operating without state intervention or regulation is one of the most pernicious, pervasive, and persistent myths in contemporary American politics.  And while libertarians have utterly failed at launching a viable political party, they have won a bigger prize –… Read full post »

Marx famously said that the bourgeoisie unwittingly produces its own gravediggers.  Marx was convinced that capitalism inexorably gives rise to an elite social class whose members create an economy that contains the seeds of its own destruction.  The prime movers in Marx's theory of history… Read full post »

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Many readers will recognize these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem, "Kubla Khan".  Coleridge (1772-1834) wa… Read full post »

Every morning at the start of the school day when I was a boy, we would stand next to our desks facing the flag with our hands over our hearts and say these words:

 "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic… Read full post »

The high-profile "hate crime" case involving Rutgers roommates, one of whom was meek, bespectacled, and gay, the other rich, rakish, and reputedly arrogant.  The two college freshmen co-existed without open hostility but rarely spoke a word.  Tyler Clementi would invite a gay lover to the r… Read full post »

At least one presidential candidate who inveighs against federal regulation of giant corporations and megabanks favors government regulation of sexual relations between consenting adults. His name is Rick Santorum.

MEMO TO RICK SANTORUM: WE WERE ALL FEMALES ONCE...

It's true, Rick. We all start out… Read full post »

Robert lives just down the street in "The most beautiful little city in Kansas."  Robert and his wife, Linda, have three kids in school.  We don't  know them very well but it's a nice neighborhood, the kind of place where everybody says "hello" or waves when they drive by.

Standing in… Read full post »

"There's nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse."  It's one of my favorite quotes and it's usually attributed to my all-time favorite cowboy philosopher, Will Rogers, but I've seen the quote attributed to everybody from Ronald Reagan to Mark Twain. … Read full post »

Not long ago, I posted an article debunking the claim that giant corporations and wealthy investors are "job creators".*  In fact, the 1%ers who control at least 50% of the investment assets in this country care far less about creating jobs than avoiding taxes.   For the multi-millionaires… Read full post »

There was an Indian, who had known no change,

Gathering shells.  He heard a sudden strange

Commingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech.

For in the bay, where nothing was before

Moved on the sea, by magic, huge… Read full post »

                                                 &nbs… Read full post »