Even as doctors try to reassure the public, and TV news anchors get their swine flu shots on the morning news, there remains a great unease about vaccinations in the US. People hesitant to take the needle are marginalized as anti-vaccine nuts, regardless of the many justifiable reasons to distrust...

At McGrath Elementary up in Michigan we were learning a lesson no other generation of children had ever been taught. Our school was new and the paint smelled fresh and the metal trim of the windows shined even on the innumerable gray days. The desks we had been given had...

When we lived in our little white rented house a few miles north of the big river there were two bushes that grew in a corner of the back yard. They struggled because an old cottonwood and two orange trees took most of the sun and when the slanted rain...

In all of the white-hot vitriol being spewed over a national health care plan, very little attention is being directed at the pharmaceutical companies and the potential conflicts of interest involving the doctors doing their research. In America, we are generally of the belief that by the time a drug...

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." - Butch Hancock, Musician, the Flatlanders

A...

When Richard Wolffe went to work for Austin-based Public Strategies, he was merely keeping viable a tradition whereby those of us formerly in journalism make transitions to more lucrative careers. The former Newsweek correspondent, however, has been caught attempting to change the game. Both Wolffe and his employer seem to...

I read with great sadness about NBC's decision to have Keith Olbermann back off of his criticism of Bill O'Reilly. I'm trying to convince myself the New York Times' piece was satire but I did that with Judy Miller's Iraq reporting and that taught me I don't understand satire. Who...

The genteel interview of the former empress of Iran conducted by MSNBC Tuesday is a vital example of how American political sensibilities are dangerously lacking context. We watch on the web and television as Iranians die in the street demanding proof of a democratic election and we are mostly...

The Internet may one day prove to be the most profoundly transformative creation of humankind. There is also the possibility it can turn into a garbage dump of the human mind where the glittering is buried beneath the refuse. The overwhelming flow, redirection, and accumulation of information have the potential...

The end of General Motors will mark a painful conclusion to a distinctly American story. Forgotten in the collapse will be the millions of people who migrated from South to North to take a chance and build the most successful company yet seen in the history of business. Their lives...

The man at the airport bar was watching Dick Cheney on FOX News. (No matter where I travel, FOX News is on the monitors, which explains much about our nation's present predicament.)

"I gotta admit," the man said. "I agree with him. I don't like him much, but I agree...

"If I owned Texas and hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in hell." - U.S. Gen. Phillip Sheridan, 1866

When they held their constitutional convention in a cotton gin on the edge of the Texas Hill Country, they seemed a merry band of pranksters. The Republic of Texas Militia,...

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." - Jean Paul Sartre

The news that America's policies toward Cuba are changing will further humanize our country while de-humanizing Castro's government. We minimize our political gains with the people of Cuba when we further their hardship under Castro...

"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves." - Albert Einstein

There is an attorney who can get to the bottom of our current financial crisis and lay the blame and guilt at...

There is an old saw in marketing and public relations that if you don't quickly brand your company's products and services the public will brand them for you. Whether that brand ends up being good or bad becomes secondary to the fact that you are not likely to ever get...

Even in retirement, George W. B**h (I refuse to write his name any longer) and his retinue of sycophants cannot stop from being disruptive and culturally, as well as ethically, disconnected from reality. The Crawford Cowboys have picked a fight with Southern Methodist University in Dallas over a think tank...

"It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously."
- Oscar Wilde

I am inclined to wonder if there is a line somewhere in the Book of Revelation that proclaims "and a comic shall lead them." Jon Stewart has set new...

We were bound for glory. The hard work was completed. Environmental scoping had found the least disruptive route for a high-speed train from Miami to Orlando and then over to Tampa. We had branded the project FOX for the Florida Overland Express. A sleek red-tail in full stride was to...

Never envisioned myself writing a sentence like this but I hope Rush Limbaugh succeeds. Yep, I hope he spreads his vile as far and wide as he possibly can through his EIB (Extremely Ignorant Broadcast) network. Through his outreach, even more Americans will come to know the absurdity of Limbaugh's...

"America is the land where people find whatever they have lost." - Gunter Grass

I vaguely recognized the nation President Obama was describing as he spoke to a joint session of congress. This was America, the one I have been reading and hearing about since I was a...