David Macaray

A vial of Ronald Reagan's blood, purportedly drawn from the President's vein as he clung to life after being shot in an assassination attempt, in 1981, has been put on the auction block by a British online auction house. By all accounts, the bids on this unique, if morbid, item...

The case can be made that the two assumptions most responsible for the political quagmire in Afghanistan are: (1) that clean-shaven men who wear ties and jackets and carry briefcases are "smarter" than scraggly bearded men who wear funny clothes and ride animals, and (2) that a technologically superior society...

A fiction writer would be hard pressed to invent a character whose life was more tragic and sorrowful, yet more inspiring and socially relevant than that of Mary Harris Jones, better known as "Mother Jones."

Born in 1837, in Cork, Ireland, the teenage Mary Harris and her family emigrated...

There's a long-standing myth that the 1950s were a sleepy time in America, both politically and culturally. We regard the decade as an intellectually nondescript and stultified time, an era enamored with the Hula-Hoop and I Love Lucy, ruled by a fuddy-duddy president ("I Like Ike") and terrorized by fluoridated...

While the history of the American labor movement is filled to overflowing with examples of conspicuous courage and unwavering solidarity (one can argue that it was organized labor, more than any other institution, that created the American middle class), labor's history is also littered with examples of ethnic and racial...

If you try to defend or make excuses for the actions of Obama's Secret Service agents in Colombia (consorting with prostitutes), you're probably going to come off as a male chauvinist or worse. Still, unless these agents' actions constituted dereliction of duty (i.e., resulted in the president's security being compromised),...

Given the wisdom imparted by the famous quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," what lessons have we learned from our recent experience in Iraq? That war is hell? That nothing works as planned? That we shouldn't meddle in Middle Eastern politics? That intelligence gathering...

Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of the 1943 Best Picture Oscar winner, Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, and Conrad Veidt. Not only is Casablanca still regarded as one of the greatest American movies ever made, it features one of the most...

One of the biggest con games going on right now is the sustained attack on the U.S. public school system. It's being perpetrated by predatory entrepreneurs (disguised as "concerned citizens" and "education reformers") hoping to persuade the parents of school-age children that the only way their kids are going to...

By now most people are aware that the U.S. produces little of its own furniture, carpeting, paint, plastics, chemicals, textiles, toys, sports equipment, clothing, shoes, jewelry, electronic equipment and kitchen appliances. Those once flourishing industries have been exported. The country that invented the microwave oven basically no longer makes them....

As reported in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution (January, 2011), scientists have determined that human beings first began wearing clothes sometime between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. Prior to that, our ancestors walked around naked.

Anthropologists speculate that clothes (i.e., the furs of animals) were first worn during...

By all accounts, the most difficult thing to do in sports is hit a moving baseball. Virtually every sports writer who ever lived would agree with that observation. The ball is traveling at upwards of 95 mph. You're standing approximately 60 feet away. The 5.25 ounce sphere reaches you in...

There's no denying that, in the world of commerce, slogans are gold. A catchy, cleverly written slogan, no matter how illogical or misleading, has an excellent chance of attracting customers. Take Nike's "Just Do It" campaign from some years ago. That catchy slogan was a huge hit, despite no one...

I know a guy who claimed to have run into Bob Dylan, in the early 1970s, in the men's restroom of the old Palomino Club, in North Hollywood. According to this guy (a huge Dylan fan), he shook Dylan's hand and told him he was "the greatest American songwriter in...

Organized labor has always known, deep-down, that the only true friend it had was labor itself. While the Democrats have thrown a few crumbs its way, and academics have eloquently given voice to the Movement, and even non-union workers have grudgingly recognized organized labor's historical contributions, when it comes to...

Comedian Bill Maher recently received some unexpected criticism from activists on his side of the political spectrum. They were upset with him for failing to rejoice at the spectacle of more than 40 advertisers withdrawing their sponsorship of Rush Limbaugh's radio show in response to insulting comments Limbaugh made on...

10 Embarrassing Things That Could Happen If Mitt Romney Is Elected

1. President Romney will attempt to retroactively baptize Millard Fillmore, Whitney Houston, and Rutherford B. Hayes.

2. While President Romney's male staffers and Cabinet members will be well-groomed and well-spoken, they will also possess the vacant, chiseled good looks...

What happened recently at the Hershey candy factory, in Palmyra, Pa., has to be one of the weirdest and most outrageous labor stories of the new year.

First the outrageous part. According to a story in the New York Times Exel, the logistics company hired by Hershey...

Even with the plethora of award presentations (SAG, WGA, DGA, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit, People's Choice, et al) occurring before the Oscars (February 26) -- and, unfortunately, diminishing much of the attendant surprise and drama -- the Academy Awards are still the best show in town. Hey, they're the Oscars....

If you're looking for evidence of just how confident, militant, and insufferably arrogant companies have become in recent years, look no further than the phenomenon of the lockout. A lockout is where a company closes its doors, refusing to allow its union employees to return to work until they accede...