The Nature of Things

There's another of the endless Republican "presidential" debates tonight and I can hardly wait to see what the slavering audience will cheer this time. So far the Republican debate audiences have gone wild to show their support for: The death penalty to be applied without restraint. Letting uninsured people die of treatable diseases. An electrified border fence to kill people who try to cross it. Furthermore, they have booed: Gay soldiers who choose to serve their country, even those who are in war zones. Letting children (who may themselves be citizens) of undocumented workers pay in-state tuition at Texas universities. Given that history, it's really not all that hard to predict what the crowd might get hot and excited about this time. I would guess that if Newt Gingrich mentions his plan to do away with child labor laws and put six-year-olds to work as janitors, the Republican crowd would love it. And if he goes even further and mentions his long-ago scheme of hav...

It's the name of a big, new novel by Stephen King and, for my generation of Americans, it is a sad date forever etched in our memories. 11/22/63 - the date that our president was murdered. Each year since, as the fatal date draws near, there is always a flurry of news stories about it and a flurry of commentary, both positive and negative, about the president who died that day in Dallas. This year is no exception. In addition to King's book, we have the release by Caroline Kennedy of her mother Jacqueline's taped 1964 reminiscences with Arthur Schlesinger and Chris Matthews' biography of the man, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero .  Also, the weekend just past brought us a long article in New York Magazine by Frank Rich entitled "What Killed JFK?" Rich's answer to the question he poses is that it was the pervasive hatred of the times which created the atmosphere where a deranged loser could believe that it would be acceptable for him to assassinate a president. I...