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...

Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents... pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. ~Abraham Lincoln

When Rick Santelli made his CNBC rant about bailing out homeowners who were upside down on their mortgages and couldn't make their monthly payments, I found myself, just for...

"The wildest colts make the best horses." - Plutarch

He came into the world howling and in many ways he has never stopped. Finally, people are hearing what he has to say. I knew him on his first day and I will be friends with him on my...

I know a guy in Washington who works for a quasi-governmental agency. You know these operations; they have some government money but are involved in endeavors the official government can't really endorse or engage. Usually, it's something scientific that might be new or developing or relatively fringe to the mainstream....

The private planes flew almost elegantly into the airport in Pitkin County. Sleek and beautiful, the craft slipped through the sky above the Continental Divide and banked sharply to the east for their approach to Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley. Squawking wheels indicated the great captains of industry had...

"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy."

- John Updike

Rich people are stupid. Or maybe they're smart. Who the hell knows? Watching A-Rod grimace through his interview with Peter Gammons on ESPN, it was hard not to think about Bernie Madoff and what his answers might be...

"Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people that never knew Lord Jones was alive." - G. K. Chesterton

There comes a time to stop fretting and make a decision. The great angst over the future of newspaper journalism has become an unnecessary expenditure of energy....

Americans have a desperate need to believe. We want to trust our government and our leaders. Our default position is to accept without too much questioning the assertions of our presidents and the institutions of our government. Few of us are easily convinced yet today that America was involved in...