Christopher Brauchli

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts. -- --Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

Two bits of bad news to dampen any cheer earlier reports might have warranted. It is accompanied by one bit of good news. The bad news comes from Alabama and Iowa. The good news...

A great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.
G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession

I hope he remembers them. The explanations, that is. They could be handy if anyone ever asks him about his days as a missionary. Of course it's possible that no one will since everyone...

My holy of holies is the human body, health. . . and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence. . . .
~ Anton Chekhov, Letter to Alexei Pleshcheev

Since not all my readers get to movies on a regular basis and many of them will have...

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child
--Proverbs 13:24

Except for Clarence Thomas, things are not nearly as bleak as commentators would have had us believe after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the recent case of Florence v. County...

"Old times they are not forgotten"
- "Dixie," popular American song about the Old South

It's hard to keep Alabama out of the news. Two of its recent newsworthy events deserve attention. The first is its attempt to improve on the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection...

Among animals, one has a sense of humor. ~ Marianne Moore, The Pangolin

It is always refreshing when folks who are charged with dealing with really serious subject matter bring a note of levity into the proceedings so people don't get too depressed. Of course, sometimes the levity may...

Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural.
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, Evolution and Permanence of Type (1874)

It's time for an update on the progress of evolution. Oklahoma and Tennessee are in a closely matched race to...

I cried all the way to the bank. ~ Wladziu Valentino Liberace, An autobiography

It was just an unfortunate coincidence that the two events came within a couple of weeks of each other. The first was a legal opinion by Chancellor Leo Strine of the Court of Chancery...

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.

Now that it appears that Rick Santorum is more than a flash in the hot (albeit not globally warmed) evolutionary pan, I...

Hanging is the worst use a man can be put to. ~ Sir Henry Wotton, The Disparity Between Buckingham and Essex (1651)

It is not often that one is inclined to look to other countries to see if there are procedures that could be usefully introduced into...

"As for that," said Waldershare, "sensible men are all of the same religion."
"And pray, what is that?" inquired the prince.
"Sensible men never tell."
Benjamin Disraeli, Endymion

The good new is they've been told to stop. The bad news is that may...

it won't be long now it won't be long
man is making deserts of the earth
it won't be long now
before man will have it used up
so that nothing but ants
and centipedes and scorpions
can find a living on it.

He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground. -- James Bryant Conant, Notes on the Harvard Tercentenary [1936]

The increasing cost of obtaining an education was highlighted when President Obama revealed his latest budget on February 13, 2012. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in recent years...

Oh my son's my son till he gets him a wife,
But my daughter's my daughter all her life.
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Young and Old

I have received a number of inquiries from people who are interested in exotic estate planning techniques. Their inquiries...

Like one that stands upon a promontory,
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal with his eye.
Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth

It's all because of the little noticed annual report for 2010 from the United States Department of...

And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks.
Samuel Butler, Hudibras

Health care coverage is one horse that the Church has chosen to ride in order to protect its belief in the sanctity of its beliefs. Sex, rather than God, is its...

From an evolutionary point of view, man has stopped moving, if he ever did move.
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of man

Those who hated to see the primary come to an end in New Hampshire and, with it, the extensive coverage that small state received,...

Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it.
Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

Democracies cannot dispense with hypocrisy any more than dictatorships can with cynicism. ~ Georges Bernanos, We French

Arms sales are not as straightforward as one might think. For one thing, Russia and the United States are both eager to maintain their respective positions as the most successful merchants of...

Finder's Keepers, Losers Weepers. ~ A child's saying

I hope Secretary of State Clinton is not too disappointed. If she'd asked me I could have told her how it was going to come out. Indeed, had someone reminded her of Qatar, she wouldn't have even bothered to ask. The Qatar...