Things haven’t gone well for the American people or President Obama lately. Although the most recent, most terrible problem — the murderous bombings at the Boston Marathon — ended as well as it could have, all things considered. One radical Islamist terrorist was killed; the other was captured after a city-wide manhunt. The citizens of Boston were celebrating last night, waving American flags and...
Jorge Mario Bergoglio had to wait 76 years for his moment in history to arrive. Last Wednesday, March 13, 2013, it did. The Argentine cardinal, elected as the new head of the Roman Catholic Church by his colleagues, is a breath of fresh air to a church that, despite its official membership of 1.2 billion, worldwide, sorely needed one. Hardly anyone saw the tall,...
Some entertainment groups seem to go on forever. The Hackberry Ramblers, a Cajun music ensemble, began in 1933 in Louisiana, and had continuity and were still playing until the early 2000s, when the last two original members died, IN their...
“We must end the terribly racist apartheid system in South Africa,” they said. “We must institute a democratic government based on the will of the majority of South Africans,” they said. “Let us institute boycotts, international condemnation, and...
A historic era in American sports ended last Saturday, Jan. 19. Virtually the last survivor of the great major league baseball players of the 1940s and ’50s, Stanley Frank “Stan the Man” Musial, died at his Missouri home, peacefully, surrounded...
“Never allow a tragedy to go to waste!” — Rahm Emanuel. Thus spake one of Barack Obama’s leading flacks, once upon a time. He’s now the mayor of Chicago, the world’s biggest shooting gallery (over 500 murders last year; more...
(Author’s note: I wrote this fantasy story for Christmas, 1997, when I was still employed at the Madison Courier. The publisher, for reasons best known to her, would not permit the editor to publish the story. So this is...
My only remaining uncle, Joseph “Joe” Wingham, passed away recently at age 87 in Cincinnati. He was the last survivor of a remarkable family of 13 children, whose life spans extended from 1897 to Uncle Joe’s death just before this...
Democratic party prankster Dick Tuck once ran for political office, and was soundly defeated. Asked by the press for a concession statement, Tuck said, “The people have spoken — the bastards!” The American people spoke yesterday, giving another four-year...
The third and final presidential debate for 2012 is now history. President Obama came across as much more aggressive than he had in the first debate — more so even than in the second. But at times he sounded,...
Let’s say you were on the board of a huge, major corporation which had been slipping badly for the past four years. Let’s say you’ve been given a chance to hire a new CEO — a slightly stiff, not...
Who is Barack Obama — really? What does he have in mind for this country — if he wins a second term and doesn’t ever have to face the voters again? If you watch the first-rate documentary “2016: Obama’s...
Jenny Lind was a “rock star” long before the term was even coined. “The Swedish Nightingale” is judged to have been the greatest soprano singer of the 19th Century. Her nickname was as well known in her day as...
“Jesse Owens, the son of sharecroppers, grandson of a slave, won four gold medals in track and field at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, exploding Adolf Hitler’s myth of ‘Aryan supremacy.’ Hitler, the most evil man in...
Maybe we need to invite Larry the Cable Guy to Madison to see what he could do about the Elks building impasse, which is nearing its sixth anniversary with no solution in sight. After all, Larry is always telling...
You’ve got to hand it to that John Roberts. The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court managed to craft a majority opinion on the burning question of whether Obamacare is constitutional, which delighted the liberals who had detested...
(Photos by Nice Shots!) My hometown is Madison, Indiana. You could say that my city has a kind of split personality, as Midwest towns go. Make that split personality, squared. No, I’m not dumping on Madison when I say...
“Why care about Hammond’s buses?” asked the headline on an opinion piece which appeared in The Madison Courier this week. The piece was written by Morton Marcus, an independent economist, writer and speaker, and it pretty much summed up...
Sometimes people “go to the well” once too often. They “wear their welcome out.” They refuse to “quit while they’re ahead.” Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., found that out last night, when he was denied a seventh term by the...
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made an interesting statement the other day. He said that if America goes further down the “entitlement route” than we’ve already gone, we’ll no longer be a nation which honors people’s striving for success....
BULLETIN A “female relative” (anonymous, of course) has “come forward” in a manner of speaking to accuse George Zimmerman of having “molested her” from the time she was 6 and he was 8. It’s another one of those “I...
Black Americans tend to speak of one of their own as “the brother”. Thus, President Barack Hussein Obama presumably is referred to in that affectionate way by many of those blacks who support his re-election — say, oh, about...
It must be the time for old, classic silent movies. “The Artist” and “Hugo” won a bushel of Oscars between them at the Academy Awards; and after many years of waiting and wanting, I finally got to view Buster...
Rioters burned and trashed downtown Athens, Greece, this past week, protesting the severe austerity measures that the country’s Parliament is being forced to take to obtain a European Union loan and avoid national bankruptcy. Protesters raised seven kinds of...
What’s an “epigram”? Well, it’s a short, pithy saying with a surprise at the end, some wit, and a kernel of truth. Like Oscar Wilde’s, “I can resist anything but temptation.” Or Will Rogers’, “I belong to no organized...
Has Newt Gingrich stolen the Republican presidential nomination right out of Mitt Romney’s hand, just as the former Massachusetts governor seemed about to grasp the gold ring? It would seem that way at this writing, shortly after the closing...
The U.S. unemployment rate is still far higher than any president wants it to be in the year he’s seeking re-election. Public unhappiness with the direction the country is heading is astronomically high. Americans are worried — REALLY worried...
A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine was telling me of photos he had shot, late at night here in Madison. And he made one remark that led me to say, “I think you just gave me...
(I wrote this short story, about a young boy and girl in modern times whose fascination with the “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry leads them down roads they never imagined, several years ago. Hope you enjoy it.) —— “Who’s Gene...
American newspapers from larger cities tend to reflect their regional peculiarities, likes and dislikes, and so on. That’s true of even the New York Times and Washington Post, which are considered national news media outlets as well as ones...
They’ve made another movie about Shakespeare! That’s the good news. Now the bad news: Once again, as in “Shakespeare In Love,” The Bard himself plays second fiddle to someone else. In “Shakespeare In Love,” it was a 16th Century...
The Jefferson County Public Library finally has a new director, announced today. He’s Brent Stokesberry, currently at the La Porte County Library in La Porte. And he grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, that last fact may seem...
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas came late to the ranks of Republican hopefuls for the right to face President Obama next year for president. But once in, he zoomed clear to the top of the polls. If one goes...
Fewer and fewer Madisonians nowadays would recognize the name “Gavin Lodge” if you said it to them. But I’ll never forget him — he was my best school pal, the guy I was closest to from, oh, about the...
Our venerable guardian, our Jefferson County Courthouse, is back up and running. And looking better than ever. The May 20, 2009 fire that destroyed the cupola and roof and heavily damaged the third floor couldn’t keep the grand old...
Until about a year and a half ago, I didn’t think I could write poetry. (Who was that out there who just said, “You can’t!”?) But anyway, early last year I started gingerly trying to pen some verse, for...
OK, here’s the plan: You and me find the biggest, nastiest paddle that’s ever been made. We take it down to Washington, D.C. And then we use it to whip about 536 asses. Yep, you guessed it. I’m talking...
Imagine two modern, very powerful locomotives on one railroad track. They are still about 10 or 12 miles apart, but they are barreling pell-mell toward each other. Soon, if someone doesn’t pull a switch to shunt one onto a...
The Stranger within my gate, He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk – I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth, But not the soul behind....
Jimmer Fredette is coming on strong, looking more and more like a high NBA draft pick. The “too slow,” “can’t play defense” (translation: Too White) jibes are growing fainter and fainter. “The Book of Mormon: The Musical” walked away...
“We cannot have the same America, with different people.” If one had to sum up Jared Taylor’s incisive, riveting new book, “White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century,” in one sentence, the one above in Mr. Taylor’s own...
Nazi hunters combine Shylock, Inspector Javert
Look at the photo at left accompanying this story. Doesn’t that guy look like a dangerous, evil, murderous Nazi? Can’t you just imagine him slaughtering thousands of Jews at a World War II concentration camp? Sounds silly, doesn’t it? He looks like somebody’s benevolent grandfather. Make that great-grandfather — he’s almost 94 years old. This photo which appeared in the German newspaper Die Welt is of Hans Lipschis, who was born to a Protestant family in Lithuania in 1919, who served in the German Army in World War II, and who at one time was a camp guard — or at any rate, who served in some capacity — at Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where more than one million people, mostly Jews, were gassed or otherwise murdered prior to 1945. About a week ago, German police arrested him at his home in southwest Germany on charges that he was “complicit to murder”...
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