From time to time I intend to tell a story and will do so through a brief video podcast I am calling (for now) One Story. The first commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Dresden bombing (a significant day to me as the son of one of the bombers and having visited Dresden only a…
Hats Off to Frederick News-Post for Kirby Delauter Editorial Frederick County is Maryland’s best kept secret. While Baltimore, Annapolis and the Eastern Shore are well-known tourist destinations, Frederick County is tucked away in the Catoctin Mountains near Pennsylvania and includes quaint historic Frederick. When Frederick County is in the news it is usually because of…
Beyond Selma Writing The Next Chapter in American Civil Rights History December 31, 2014 CLICK LINK TO COMMENT ON HUFFPOST SITE In November 2012, I worked with the Obama campaign’s anti-voter suppression efforts in Florida. I was shocked when I saw that voters in largely Hispanic and African-American areas were forced to wait hours and…
Liberal Giant Henry Waxman Retires After 40-Years in Congress December 27, 2014 My introduction to Henry Waxman came in 1980 watching the film “HR 6161: An Act of Congress” in my political science class at American University. The story was about the passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 where a second-term Rep.…
America’s Day of Shame and Redemption December 13, 2014 Throughout the Obama administration, the President has focused on moving forward and not dwelling on the actions of his predecessor. As Faulkner reminds us, however, the past never dies and has a strange capacity for calling our attention as was the case this week with…
Originally posted on Quartz:
The Federal Reserve of New York is worried about America’s student loans. Its latest snapshot on borrowing shows that even though Americans have been working on shoring up their finances over the past few years, more people are falling behind on their student loans. The rate of delinquency and its impact on the…
Originally posted on PandoDaily:
For all the hatred that is too often spread online, the Internet also has the power to connect and heal. I’ve come face to face with that power over the last 24 hours and it’s been incredibly uplifting. The story begins with a tragic event in the coastal LA community of…
The Unbearable Rudeness of Bibi January 24, 2015 With the front page of the paper being occupied by so-called Deflate-gate, Congress was quick to reclaim its rightful place with its own mini-tempest over House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu to speak before a Joint Meeting of Congress without prior notice…
Originally posted on Quartz:
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced Jan. 22 that it is moving the hand of the “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight. Through a combination of nuclear weapons and increasing global warming, the Bulletin’s executive director Kennette Benedict said that there were some “truly terrible prospects” for the fate of humanity on the…
A cacophonous celebration of the New Year from around the world and across the internet! NEW YEAR’S EVE FROM AROUND THE WORLD . . . AND FROM THE INTERNETS . . .
Note to Republicans: On Race, Actions Speak Louder Than Words The scandal over Steve Scalise raises a very difficult challenge for Republicans. On the one hand, the party now has a lock on the white vote throughout the South but they bristle at the suggestion that they endorse racism. The strongest way to communicate the message that…
JAN-MAR The NHL’s Winter Classic’s Road to the Big House Part 1 The NHL’s Winter Classic’s Road to the Big House Part 2 New Year’s Day, long one of the high holy days of American football with bowl game after bowl game, is fast becoming a holy day for hockey fans thanks to the…
A review of editorials nationwide and overseas reveal a broad sense of outrage over the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary of its 6,700 page Study on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. The sense that the CIA had wrongfully stained our national honor and that America does not torture was stated eloquently in every region…
Originally posted on Quartz:
A wide-ranging US Senate investigation into the CIA’s tactics in the so-called War on Terror confirms the use of torture to interrogate captives at black sites around the world—and shows that it was only in spite of this cruelty that the US was able to find and kill the architect of…
A SlideShare presentation on Ferguson, Staten Island and the importance of justice in a free society.
What is Giving Tuesday? We have a day for giving thanks. We have two for getting deals. Now, we have #GivingTuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back. On Tuesday, December 2, 2014, charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world will come together for one common purpose: to celebrate generosity and to give.…
I came to Washington, DC at the end of Marion Barry’s first term as Mayor of DC and left just prior to his regaining his job after his drug conviction, so I feel compelled to make some note about the late Mayor. A Time of Prosperity and Violence. DC prospered during this time and some longtime…
HARVARD STUDENTS FLUNK 1964 LOUISIANA VOTER LITERACY TEST REPUBLICANS WANT TO BRING THEM BACK The past is never dead. It’s not even past. William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun Harvard students recently attempted to take the 1964 voter Louisiana voter literacy test (see bottom for test) and they all failed. Louisiana was just one of…
Originally posted on Cyber Report:
? PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CALL FOR FCC TO ADOPT STRONG NET NEUTRALITY RULES PRESENTATIONS ON NET NEUTRALITY ; First Part of Internet Law 2014 deals with Net Neutrality CLBR RADIO BROADCASTS AND COMMENTARY ON NET NEUTRALITY Comments Submitted to FCC (7/15/14) What Next for Net Neutrality (2/12/14) It is Still Our Internet and…
RIP Tomas Young Tomas Young, who enlisted in the Army as a 21-year old two days after 9-11 and was paralyzed by a sniper’s bullet on his 5th day in Iraq, died on Sunday at the age of 34. Young was left paralyzed from the waist down and as the result of medical complications later…
The modern Democratic coalition is a boom-and-bust coalition that depends heavily on minorities and young people who turn out much less regularly in midterm than presidential elections. Older voters, who are trending steadily toward the GOP, vote much more reliably. Beyond any short-term factors, this is creating a structural disadvantage for Democrats in off- From 2008…
As election night draws near, here is a reflection on some of my favorite and least memories from election nights past. BEST #1 – 1992: The Comeback Kid Wins Having been involved with the Clinton campaign since 1991, it was an up and down campaign like no other. The Republicans had held the White House…
One of the more interesting races in Southern California is the State Senate battle between Ben Allen and Sandra Fluke in Senate District 26, a newly reshaped district that covers Los Angeles’ west side and beach cities from Santa Monica to Palos Verdes. I had originally supported my friend Betsy Butler, who fell about 3,500 votes…
When we see the photo of the “Tiananmen Tankman,” we all respond because we understand that what he sought – freedom – is a fundamental human right. How many think, “well wait a minute, how is he going to exercise that right?”
That is the state of the Republican Party today.
I currently have four friends/colleagues who are running for Congress this year – two Democrats, two Republicans. Below is the final profile of the series I am doing this in part because too often people dismiss those running for public office as tainted by the political process, when there truly are many good people who…
