Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office January 20, 2009. The challenges he inherited on that historic occasion were as great as any president has faced -- including Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt; any assessment of Mr. Obama's presidency not accounting for those challenges would be incomplete --...

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." ~ Meister Eckhardt
 
The coming of Christmas, whether accepted in either a spiritual or secular context, is a time when many Americans pause to reflect on the paradigm of...

On Thanksgiving I arose before six, pushed a button on our automatic coffee maker, put a slice of Dudley's Julian Nut Bread in the toaster, and went out to our driveway to collect The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Diego's local daily, the U-T.

Alas, there were...

A few years back the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sought membership in the San Diego County Ecumenical Council, an organization of more than 100 Christian churches. The petition for membership was received while I was Council president.

While I favored the Mormons' membership the Catholic...

For my part, I would be satisfied if one could say that in my place, with the humble means at my disposal, I served to make known and disseminate her work whose full impact we have yet to measure. ~ Albert Camus

In the early spring of 1982...

The function of the press is very high. It is almost holy. -- Louis D. Brandeis, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court

A media scandal has been unfolding in Great Britain, the likes of which has never been witnessed before.

The scandal is so great it threatens the media empire...

Dick Williams, the Baseball Hall of Fame manager (he won two World Championships for the Oakland Athletics), died Thursday. He was 82.

He managed six major league teams, including the Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, and the San Diego Padres, in addition to the Athletics. In '84 he took the...

On Wednesday the president of the United States was subjected to a humiliating moment that no president of the United States should ever be forced to experience, to prove he's an American citizen and therefore qualified to be president.

Yes, other presidents have had their moments of public humiliation,...

In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all. ~ Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"

Liberalism's fate,...

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the ultimate authority on the English language, whose origins date to 1857, defines "irrational" as: "not logical or reasonable; not endowed with the power of reason."

It's not easy to move from the OED, one of scholarship's greatest works to baseball, but on this, baseball's...

I went to the White House Tuesday for the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony honoring 15 people, from Warren Buffet to George Herbert Walker Bush; from Stan Musial to Bill Russell; from Maya Angelou to Yo-Yo Ma.

I was not the only person from San Diego present....

On the second day of November last year there were 255 Democrats and 180 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives; one-day later there were 193 Democrats and 242 Republicans.

The Democrats were swept from power and the makeup of the incoming 112th Congress was dramatically changed - underscored the...

Sargent Shriver was one of the most attractive, dynamic, and accomplished men of his time. When President John F. Kennedy chose Mr. Shriver to create the Peace Corps in 1961, it was a brilliant choice. That Mr. Shriver was the husband of the president's sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, didn't hurt,...

Paras' newsstand in San Diego's North Park community has been there as long as I can remember (if only I could remember how long that's been).

I love newsstands, and no matter where I've lived over the years, there have been newsstands in my life.

When we lived in Pasadena...

The 112th Congress convenes January 3, 2011.

The day before Rhode Island congressman Patrick J. Kennedy will enter private life, marking the first time in sixty-four years a Kennedy will no longer be a member of either the United States House of Representatives or the Senate, and by that absence...

The morning after the election I was asked my reaction to what unfolded the day before.

I was probably not the right person to ask. For a long time I held that Democrats would hold both the House and the Senate. In that judgment I was wrong -- and in...

Tuesday is Election Day, which made me think of the late pop vocalist Peggy Lee's famous song, "Is That All There Is?"

Some think Armageddon awaits. Others, the Rapture.

I think it's neither, but when it's over, when the polls have closed and the ballots counted and The People have...

James Wexler is a brilliant Massachusetts State Trial Court judge, who grew up in Brooklyn.

As happens among friends we frequently exchange emails. Recently the judge wrote about the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers -- a signing that changed baseball and changed our country.

His email...

No one need listen to us who does not want to. We whisper in a corner of the world which is full of other noises, and louder ones. --E.M. Forster

Thirty-five years ago The City Club of San Diego held its inaugural program. It was a luncheon in the...

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. ~ William Butler Yeats

Glenn Beck, the famous talk show host on Fox News, was in our nation's capital last Saturday to appear at a meeting of his own creation. He and his followers gathered at the...