Category Archives: Civil Liberty

When the People Lead…

2/25/2010 – 1:46 pm

Vermont’s a small state with a so-called “citizen legislature.” Our legislators don’t have staffs and offices, they have desks in the House or Senate chamber. The committee rooms are small, sometimes people testifying have to wait in the hall until it’s their turn to speak; there’s just not enough room inside. Our legislators all have […]

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The Strange Case of Amy Bishop

2/18/2010 – 8:22 am

Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama professor who is alleged to have killed three and wounded three at a departmental staff meeting last week, presents a strange case. It’s strange her husband told reporters he didn’t know she had a gun – until he remembered he’d accompanied her to a shooting range several times in […]

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Not Measured By Length

1/28/2010 – 12:19 pm

In the autumn of 1987, I canvassed Kensington, Maryland on behalf of the US Public Interest Research Group. I was talking to citizens about acid rain. (Seems almost quaint now.) Canvassing’s a tough job. You get many noes for each yes and you have to keep a thick skin about you. At one house, the […]

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Re-Creation Stories

1/21/2010 – 8:42 am

January sun was warm in Washington on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It caused me to slip the jacket from my shoulders as I walked on New Hampshire Avenue. There were no eviction piles of possessions along the curb this week, as there were in November. Instead, Christmas trees had been put to the curb, […]

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Two Priests Walk Into….

12/24/2009 – 10:59 am

A chain store? A casino? Two stories in Wednesday’s Washington Post: The first was about Father Tim Jones, an Anglican priest at the parish of St. Lawrence in York, England. From the pulpit last Sunday, Fr. Tim said shoplifting is not a sin, if the act was caused by need instead of greed. He encouraged […]

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On New Hampshire

11/19/2009 – 8:18 am

I’m in Washington, DC this week. It’s warmer here than in Vermont, I feel overdressed. It’s autumnal, but in a mid-Atlantic kind of way. Monday evening I walked northwest on New Hampshire Avenue. The evening was balmy; the leaves were piled thick and dry along the gutters and across the sidewalks. The air was rich […]

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The Edge of History

11/12/2009 – 9:31 am

I hate anniversary journalism, but the remembrances of the fall of the Berlin Wall this week got me thinking. I was in Chicago that week in 1989, watching the news in a hotel room as I rested my feet, which ached from walking all over town in new shoes. Never visit Chicago if you’re wearing […]

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