The end of 2018 brought two news items that don’t make sense to me—a soccer stadium and a politician’s farewell speech.
First, the soccer stadium. Columbus and Franklin County will help fund the proposed Arena District soccer stadium. The city will contribute $50 million for site development and infrastructure costs, and the county will pitch in ...
Is it smart to fight fire with fire in politics? Some months back, Congresswoman Maxine Waters urged her constituents to be uncivil to Republicans in public. A restaurant owner in Northern Virginia asked White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. Protesters disrupted the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Hillary Clinton said that Democrats should not be civil with Republicans until they change their way of thinking.
Columnists Michael Gerson and Bret Stephens warn us about the futility of fighting ...
Continue Reading →If you haven’t noticed, Congress doesn’t represent a cross-section of America. Its members comprise a narrow sector of the nation, and that’s a problem for reasons I’ll discuss in a minute. First, let’s look at the numbers.
Non-Hispanic whites make up 61 percent of our population, but 80 percent of representatives and senators are white. People 60 years old or older make up just 20 percent of the population but the average age of a representative is 57; for a senator ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
President Donald Trump warns that the Senate confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh indicates that “it’s a very scary time for young men in America.” Fox journalist Jeanine Pirro believes the left is setting a new standard—“You are guilty until proven innocent”—and that due process, probable cause and reasonable doubt no longer have any meaning.
Let’s drop the hyperbole and recognize that the Kavanaugh hearing, while ugly, was, in essence, a job interview on a national scale.
What should have been a dignified ...
Continue Reading →
Brett Kavanaugh succeeded in making it through the Senate confirmation process, but how he would have fared if applying for a job in the private sector? Though both involve a vetting process, the Senate hearings were more concerned about ensuring a conservative voice was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and less concerned about what kind of man Kavanaugh is.
A private employer, on the other hand, would want to know ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
The Pew Research Center reports that income inequality is at its highest point since 1928. Will it ever substantially improve? Not without a dramatic paradigm shift.
From 1979 to 2015, annual wages increased for the bottom 90 percent of Americans by 21 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For the top 1.0 percent, the increase was 105 percent. For the top 0.1 percent, it was 339 percent.
Our system is based on the paradigm, as Professor Scott R. Sanders of Indiana ...
Continue Reading →Who would ever think Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi have anything in common? Then again, what about those outsize egos they lug around?
Trump proved his ego is of epic proportion the week before last when talking on Fox & Friends about the Mueller investigation (as reported by CBS News). “If I ever get impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor.” He ...
After being terminally ill for months or perhaps years, should you have the right to say, “I’ve had enough. It’s time to die?” Not only a tough question, it’s one that makes us uneasy.
Seven states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington—and the District of Columbia permit what some call “death with dignity.” Except for Montana, the laws are similar: patients must be a resident of the state, capable of making and communicating health care decisions for themselves, at least 18 ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
[I thought it appropriate to follow my last blog, which dealt with the annoying overuse of the word, “guys,” to touch on a related subject, bad grammar. This post was published in the Columbus Bar Association Lawyers Quarterly magazine a few years back. Regrettably, what I wrote then is still relevant.]
In the words of a great American nautical hero, “I’ve had all I can stands. I can’t stands no more!” I’m talking about bad grammar. That’s right—bad grammar, a bad ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
[This piece was published a few years back in the Columbus Bar Association Lawyers Quarterly magazine. Because the state of our language continues its spiral decline, I’m posting it here.]
It’s almost too much to bear. It’s enough to make my head explode. Our English language is slowly degrading to a point where things that were once considered to be bad grammar and offensive slang are now slowly becoming the new standards.
Using the correct pronoun after a conjunction is a lost ...
Continue Reading →