The Nature of Things

There was a time when the leaking of secret government information served a useful and even noble purpose. I'm thinking in particular of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg , the purpose of which was to inform and educate the American people about what the government was doing in their name. It was to expose wrong-doing in the hopes that the people would put a stop to it. The event did have an effect on public opinion in those days. People were appalled that they had been so grossly lied to by their government and it helped to turn public opinion against the Vietnam War. That was back in the days of our innocence when we still were capable of being appalled. But frankly, in my opinion, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks guy , is no Daniel Ellsberg, and no higher purpose is being served by his organization's incessant leaking of confidential information . The only goal seems to be the greater notoriety of WikiLeaks and the greater glorification (in certain qu...

Remember Fred Phelps and his band of haters? In case you are fortunate enough to have forgotten him or to have never encountered him, he is a Primitive Baptist (primitive being the operative word) pastor of a socalled church in the Mid-West who takes a hardy band of his congregation members around the country to funerals of American military service personnel to stand and shout hateful things at the bereaved families of these people. They shout things such as "God hates fags!" and "This is God's punishment!" Their theology is that the deaths of American service members in combat are the judgment of God on this country because of our "tolerance" of homosexuality. They are quite possibly the lowest two-legged scum that exists on this planet, but because our First Amendment protects freedom of expression, they are allowed to shout their vile filth and make the worst day in some grieving parent's or spouse's life even worse. If you despise thes...

The big news in the business world today is that American business had profits of an annualized rate of $1.66 TRILLION between July and September of this year. That is a record. Those are the biggest profits ever recorded by American businesses. And yet these same American businesses are constantly whining that the Obama Administration doesn't love them and that they have created an environment that is hostile to business. Personally, I wouldn't mind a share of that hostility! It was also announced today that the economy grew faster during that same period than was previously reported. The growth rate was 2.5% instead of 2%. That's nothing to shout about, but it is a clear indication that, thanks to government assistance that pulled it out of a deep, deep hole, the economy is moving in the right direction. We've now had five consecutive quarters when the GDP grew. So why hasn't this good news for business translated into more job creation? While some jobs ...

I read Bob Herbert's latest column in The New York Times and now I'm so depressed that I just want to curl up into a tiny fetal ball and pull the covers over my head. The topic of this column - as are the topics of most of his columns - is the state of the country. He doesn't pull any punches regarding what he believes that state to be. "We're in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. It will likely take many years, perhaps a decade or more to get employment back to a level at which one could fairly say the economy is thriving." This is especially true since one of the major political parties in the country is not interested in governing or in trying to make things work better. Instead, they are betting everything on doing nothing and letting the country slide ever farther into decline and decay in the hope that that will limit President Obama to one term. That is their only concern,...

My daughters have been big Harry Potter fans virtually from the publication of the first book. They grew up with Harry and, in a sense, I did, too. I read all the books and I've seen all the movies along the way so I was very interested in the opening today of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Of course, I had to see the film and so did my daughters and so we went together to wallow in the Harry experience along with other besotted fans. We saw the movie at a mid-day showing at an IMAX theater, which was a bit overwhelming actually. The theater was perhaps two-thirds full, so crowds were not an issue as they will be for later showings. If you have followed the saga of Harry, then you know that this movie is based on the last book in the series, but only part of that book - thus the Part 1 of the title. The last book was the biggest and darkest of the series and trying to fit all of the action into one movie would have made for a very long movie. Besides, dividing ...