Some laws are obsolete. If you drive through rural parts of Pennsylvania at night, a law requires you stop every mile to send up a rocket signal. (https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/top-craziest-laws-still-on-the-books) Some laws are unnecessary. It’s actually illegal to drive blindfolded in Alabama. (https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/news/g4039/crazy-state-laws/?) Some laws are just plain dumb. In Arkansas, it’s illegal to mispronounce the state’s name,
To those who are concerned about the impact of waves of immigrants upon this country, we’ve been there before. In 1845, the Irish potato crop was attacked by a plant disease. Spreading rapidly, this mold-based scourge ruined as much as one-half of the crop that year; about three-quarters of the crop over the next seven
For a different twist on Black History Month, have you ever considered the other side? The white side? For example, have you heard of White Men For Racial Justice? Usually, any organization that has “white” in its name is a hate group, but that is definitely not true here. This is the case of people
“Are you frustrated by the hate and negativity? You’re not alone. That’s why we developed The Dignity Index, an eight-point scale that scores speech on its power to unite or divide.” We have a problem. In the past five years, threats against members of Congress have increased ten times. According to Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at
Three years ago, Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University, constructed a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship
An idea from the If-I-Ruled-The-World Department — If you believe the news reports, a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. Formerly a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Ukraine became independent following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But President of Russia Vladimir Putin, in an apparent bid to put Humpty
Do you need more evidence of how polarized the country is? I have just read that political works currently hold the top spots on the New York Times best-seller list of hardcover nonfiction books. At the very top is American Marxism by the Fox News host Mark Levin. According to the description on Amazon.com, “In American
It’s fun to play games, and much of that fun can come from winning. If it’s a simple game, like checkers, it’s easy to keep score. For every checker you capture, your opponent loses one. Simple! This straight-forward approach is called a zero-sum game: “an advantage that is won by one of two sides is
You may remember John Boehner as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. His political resume also includes being the Representative for Ohio’s 8th congressional district from 1991 to 2015, the House Minority Leader from 2007 until 2011, and House Majority Leader from 2006 until 2007. During his time in government service, Boehner was more
If you think the current political period is divisive, consider the era following the Civil War. It was a time when some thought our very democracy was broken. The trauma of war was followed by economic and technological disruption, and many turned to extreme partisanship. The result was an increased voter turnout in the closest,