Here in America, the idea of government-sponsored religious schools is an anathma, but in most other countries this is not the case. State-sponsored religion is, to some extent, the rule everywhere -- even if it's watered-down to the point of irrelevance. Such is the case in the Commonwealth of Nations,...

The countdown has started. Exactly a year from now, on October 10th, 2010, the Netherlands Antilles will cease to exist. On that day, each of the five tiny islands on the fringe of the Caribbean Sea, one with a permanent population of less than two thousand people, will become independent...

There are times when there's something egregious going on and one must speak out, and this is one of those times. President Obama is going to debase himself and his office by going to Copenhagen and kissing the collective butt of a bunch of rich, corrupt slobs who call themselves...

It's all about Yonge Street. It starts at Lake Ontario, and theoretically goes all the way to Minnesota. To the west one block is Bay, where Toronto's financial district lay, and to the west of that is University and so on and so forth until you reach Spadina. Between Younge...

The year was 1947. Senator Robert Taft, the son of a President, was in a surly mood. The Republicans had gotten Congress back for the first time in a decade and a half and he wanted revenge. He couldn't get it against the man he hated above all others, Franklin...

Much has been written about the Japanese "cult of the cute". Large dish-plate eyes and button noses in comics and cartoons are ubiquitous, and whether or not that's good or bad isn't here nor there. But the great animation director Hayao Miyazaki has used this cult to create one of...

This appears to be the year of impeachment. So far, a State Governor (Rod Blagojavitch) and a Federal Judge (Samuel Kent) have been gotten rid of this way, and it appears there might actually be more. There are three people on the dock, two of which might actually be...

Logging on to the AOL homepage this morning, (I'm too lazy to change my email address), I noticed that the House Committee on Natural Resources had just voted 30-8 to favorably report HR 2499, the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009 to the floor.

What this does, is set...

It's amazing how sometimes movies come out in bunches. This particular bunch is extremely small (does two count?) but they bring up some interesting questions. For instance, how far can a group go before being considered the "bad guy" and when and how much vandalism can be justified before it...

Humor is one of those subjective things that either works or it doesn't. Andy Borowitz's recent "critique" of last week's Comic Con is just one of those misfires that's just pathetic.

The reason I bring this up is that there may have been more women than men --...

"January 10, 1610--Galileo abolishes Heaven" Before he turned his telescope on it. The moon was thought to be made of glass. Or something with similar properties. But then the telescope was invented, and that was the only tool we had to see the heavens. Fifty years ago today, that was...

I almost forgot.... today's Bastille Day! On this day in 1789, about 600 rioters overwhelmed the guards at the notorious political prison and freed SEVEN whole prisoners. They also killed a number of the employees there.

The reason that this is the National Day of France is that this...

Today is the 233rd anniversary of the secession of 13 British North American Colonies from the Empire, thus creating the United States of America. However, the celebration is on the fourth. Why is that? Well, you have to go back to 1776 to find out...

John Dickinson was a patriot....

Rape is a horrible crime. Everyone agrees to this. It's especially so when a person in authority does it. Someone like a priest or a judge. In these cases the law should be especially harsh, but for some reason it isn't.

Federal Judges can get away with almost anything,...

Yeah, I know, the title sounds totally outrageous and disgusting, but recently, I saw a film called Yodok Stories, about a concentration camp in North Korea, and it's pretty amazing. There really isn't a difference between Yadok and Auschwitz except that the camps up there are open up now...

Sometimes historic events go unnoticed when they happen. When, in the late 1790s, some New Yorkers began trading shares of stock under a tree on Wall Street in New York for the first time, no one gave it so much as a glance. The same thing happened half a century...

"... Judged the gods of Egypt." That, in my humble opinion, is the most problematic phrase in the Bible. The words come from the book of Exodus, when God himself, not the Angel of Death, goes forth to smite the firstborn of Egypt. He judged their gods. Now why exactly...

In September of 1787, the Constitutional Convention was debating the possibility of adding a bill of rights. It wasn't going well. The list of those things that the proposed Federal Congress would be forbidden to do was whittled away to practically nothing. Why bother when most of the delegates agreed...

It was supposed to be over by now. The House rules committee was supposed to have issued a closed rule to govern the debate of the DC voting rights act yesterday and it didn't. The two "poison pill amendments" were considered to be declarations and nothing more and would have...

This is the last of a series of seven blogs, see also:Parts One,Two, Three/, Four, Five.and six.

The trip has long been over. The killer jet lag, three days of 14-18 hours of sleep a night, and all the other symptoms of travelling halfway...