According to an old superstition, it matters how many magpies you see. Because they eat and chatter together and because they are monogamous and have one mate for life, it's bad luck to see just one.
This Mother's Day, let us remember mothers and women who understood the patriotic nature of standing up for wholesome food, of standing up for the health of young children who would become our future.
SANDY HOOK, Ky. -- In 1988, the band Alabama scored a No. 1 country hit with "Song of the South," Bob McDill's tribute to life in rural Dixie. Twangy ...
Democrats should fight for jobs programs and pay equity for women, not fight to cut Social Security. Democrats should realize that when the winds of national opinion are at our back, it is folly to sail against these winds and disaster to downsize the legacy of our party.
To play with history as the background for a good story is one thing. To reach into history and snatch out well-known historical figures and make them say and do what you want to produce a sexy film is quite another.
It is time to pass the torch from the extremism, division and obstruction of Republicans to the leadership of opportunity and aspiration that was ignited with the election of Obama -- and would be culminated by the election of President Hillary Clinton.
Writer Paul Reid took Manchester's volume of work and has just completed the final work. It's very long -- 1,053 pages and small type and very, very few chapters -- but well done.
We've had several presidents whose personalities were a primary sell. Think both Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Kennedy and -- Democrats, hold your breath -- Ronald Reagan. If you listen to or read, Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber, you'll begin to get it.
If we ever hope to sponsor a productive debate in this country, we will have to spend as much time listening as we do talking. Grandstanding, posturing, and trash-talking the country is not helping.
In 490 BCE, Athenians and Plataeans defeated a vastly larger invading Persian army, thus keeping Greece and Europe free from Persian occupation and slavery. The war and resistance of Greece to Italians and Germans in WWII also saved Europe from Nazi German occupation and slavery.
When I read this book I was struck by a feeling that was at once relieved, but then clouded by a greater fear for the American character.
If we examine the state of our union honestly, it not only becomes apparent that we are indeed a society where "chance of birth or circumstance" decides our destiny.
There is no shortage of kudos now for Governor Jerry Brown, who with his State of the State address last Thursday tied the late Governor-turned-Chief Justice Earl Warren for the most such addresses in California's history. Does he have things sewn up politically in the battered but brightening Golden State?
President Obama himself recognizes the need for a rational middle ground and urges "advocates of gun control... to do a little more listening." Fair enough. But those on the gun rights side of the debate would be well advised start by listening to none other than Ronald Reagan.
Now is the right time for a discussion about the deficit and debt, but Social Security does not contribute to either, and so cuts to the program should be off the table. Any discussion of Social Security's finances should take place separately from discussions of the federal debt.
Since President George Washington's first ever inauguration in 1789, the location, date and celebration of the event has transformed. Obama's first...
The sad fact is that we now live in a society where the income disparity between the rich and the rest of us now stands at its worst level since the late 1920s -- just before the onset of the Great Depression.
When I went home for the holidays this year, I overheard my mom and uncle discussing arrangements for my grandmother's funeral, which struck me off-guard since my grandma's not dead.
With tax policy, federal spending, social insurance, and the national debt ceiling being held hostage by radical right-wing Tea Party demands, it is time for what FDR called "bold, persistent experimentation" and executive action to solve the economic crisis facing the nation.
If FDR were president today, my guess is he would not meet in secret with the House speaker to cut a backroom deal that would further hammer the 99 percent by reducing Medicare and Social Security benefits. Instead, FDR would call it like he saw it.
As folks inside the beltway battle over the fiscal showdown, it gave me pause to think what this fight is really all about. And it all boils down to if you believe in community or not.
It's not a biopic nor is it a dense procedural like Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, but instead showcases the politics of perception and interpersonal relationships, contrasted with quieter, more intimate moments away from the media and others.
We're beyond the mere need for civil discourse. Our minds are askew. We actually believe our own rhetoric as an article of faith. We no longer know how to talk because we no longer know how to think.
You're not going to see a glowing review of Oliver Stone's new book and 10-part Showtime series, The Untold History of the United States, in the New York Times anytime soon. It's just too interesting.
I assure you that this president will go on to become one of our greatest. After denial has fled our shared amnesia, history will once again see that it was this tall, thin young man who stood between us and disaster and had the courage to do what was necessary.
