Background

      My dad died in August. My brother, going through some of his papers, recently found a copy of the alternative student newspaper I helped edit as part of a "collective" in the fall of 1968, my senior year of high school. When on the phone last ni… Read full post »

     I've been a member of the ACLU and the NAACP most of my adult life. They've never disappointed. On the few occasions  they've taken positions I might not have, the clear lines of sight from principle to action have never wavered. 

   &… Read full post »

 ^{Mr. Fiala}

     Last week I shared here a first in the prosecutions of clergy in the ongoing Church pedophilia scandal. A Philadelphia monsignor stands accused of ditching documents that showed explicitly just how wantonly the archdiocese in m… Read full post »

     While I was just twelve, I recall clear as a bell Alabama Governor George Wallace's 1963 statement of  racist defiance of federal law. "No damned Katzenbach Administration is going to tell Alabama to integrate" (the University of Alabama). Needless to say, Preside… Read full post »

        What's the most effective and safest method of emergency contraception after unprotected sex?

     In a review of forty-two studies conducted between 1979 and 2011, the copper I.U.D. was shown to have a failure rate of less tha… Read full post »

Full Disclosure:

We're members of a Modern-Orthodox shul (synagogue). It's filled with religiously observant Jews (although we, ourselves, do not observe the laws having to do with, say, all that it means under Jewish Law to abstain from work on the Sabbath, nor do we observe th… Read full post »

     When Good wins, even tentatively, we should celebrate lest the cynicism that can so easily enter us in ugly times festers and grows to the point that we're left screaming, and worse, ineffective.

     Three decisions this week please me even as… Read full post »

President Barack Obama announced his support for gay marriage Wednesday, telling Robin Roberts of ABC News, "I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married."… Read full post »

     You'll recall that Ms. Bachmann, the presidential candidate and women's health scientist who believes her (closeted) husband can cure (himself and others) of homosexuality --

               &n… Read full post »

^{This is a response to what I have seen here and at Open-derived FB sites.}

I've fairly well had it with these people and, to a far less extent, with those intimidated to the point where they won't take them on. If you do determine to… Read full post »

^{Note: Every so often, I'll choose a lesser-known, provocative statement from a well-known author and ask for your response. I start w James Joyce.} 

 "There is no heresy or philosophy so abhorrent to the Church as a human being."

     … Read full post »

 ^{This is an edit of a two-year-old post.} 

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 May 4, 1970, Mary Ann Vecchio, kneeling

                          &nb… Read full post »

^Note:

^{This is a re-post with slight editing of a piece from perhaps two years back. I post it here because I referenced it in my post, yesterday, about warning signs of child abuse and an organization, Safe Horizon, which works hard to help victims and potential}… Read full post »

     I've posted here stories of child abuse from when I was a school admin in rural, southern Vermont in the late '80s, all disturbing, all with elements of the depraved and unexpected. Several weeks back the New York Times reminded me of those horrid incidents wh… Read full post »

     Among the reasons I've been an American Civil Liberties Union Member for as long as I have is the organization's understanding that it is our Constitution and not the whims of voters that must, in the end, determine fundamental rights under law.

 This is… Read full post »

     The woman is Kriztina Morvai, leader of Hungary's far right  Jobbik party. She's successful at what she does. In 2010, her party, a proudly neo-Nazi organization, won seventeen percent of the vote in parliamentary elect… Read full post »

     New research suggests strongly that people of good cheer, people who tend to see the potential for good in Everyday as well as in Great Moments are more likely than not to have a reduced risk of heart disease. Anahad O'Connor, writing in the New York Times,… Read full post »

      As keen as I am about Judaism and its wisdom-books and its history, I have, too, an abiding interest, as some know from others of my posts, in who the man, Jesus, was. I'll say from jump that I'm aware there are those who believe the man we know… Read full post »

     When reactionary Republican starlet, Congressman Paul Ryan, touted his slash and burn (the poor and middle-class) budget that ditches Medicare, Social Security, student loans, and virtually every New Deal anti-poverty advance -- the program Mr. Romney embraces -- Mr. Ryan s… Read full post »

     In the last twenty years the percentage of female military veterans doubled from four to eight. Right now women vets number 1,800,000. While, as the New York Times points out, no one knows precisely how many are homeles, we do know that the number of homeless, female vetera… Read full post »

Some of you read the draft I published two weeks back. This video of the address this past Saturday, abt 19 minutes, is in two parts, below.

Turnout world-wide was encouraging. In nations where you may be imprisoned for life or sentenced to death for being gay, this… Read full post »

     Ten minutes after she tells me I dare not grow up, my threat when together we hear on 50s on 5 of Bandstand's death, she drives to the bank. I expect her to pull into a spot, park, get out, deposit, return. 

     She moves instead into… Read full post »