Category Archives: Civil Liberty

Weird Little Gift for America

10/25/2007 – 10:52 am

The autumn afternoons are ripe and warm; the mornings are heavy with dew that is not yet frost, but soon. It’s the annual nostalgia for the summer passed and anxiety for the winter to be endured. I was staring through the window at the blaze orange of a sugar maple the other day, caught up […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Growin’ Up

10/4/2007 – 12:58 pm

In the summer of 1979, a few months after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) staged the “No Nukes” concerts in New York City. One of the acts, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, took the stage to a tremendous roar from the audience. Many […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion, Nuclear Energy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Ric Was Right

9/27/2007 – 9:24 am

At the beginning and end of 2004, I wrote here that it would be the year that determined whether America would remain a democracy. The axis upon which that question turned was whether George Bush would receive a second term in the White House, but there was more to it than that. Through that year, […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Stanley Milgram, Call Your Office

9/20/2007 – 9:46 am

In 1961, in response to the “I was just following orders” defense of Holocaust logistician Adolf Eichmann, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram devised a series of experiments in which volunteers were led to believe they were administering progressively stronger electric shocks to a fellow volunteer on the order of an authority figure conducting the experiment. In […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Slime of War

9/6/2007 – 10:57 am

If there can be a good war, then World War II was it. It was an unambiguous battle between good and evil and the good guys won. Another bonus was – oddly – the universal draft that pulled men from all walks of life and ranging in age from late teens to early 40s. The […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Double American Standard

8/30/2007 – 9:41 am

Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig is all over the news this week after the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported he’d pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor following his arrest in a restroom in the Minneapolis airport. According to police reports the senator, seated in a stall, tapped his foot, then scooted it toward an undercover […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Trouble in the Colonies

7/5/2007 – 11:53 am

The Fourth of July was cool and rainy in Vermont, as it seems to be with surprising regularity. I suppose that’s why my town sets off its fireworks on the evening of July 3rd, which was perfect for pyrotechnics this year. Fireworks finished, I had all day Wednesday to contemplate this year’s version of American […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion, Oil | Tagged , | Comments (0)