Category Archives: Civil Liberty

Keep Language Meaningful

8/16/2012 – 9:31 pm

Car owners in Vermont are required to have license plates on the front of their car(s).  There are exceptions.  In 2009, drivers could display a Lake Champlain 400th anniversary plate.  (The lake is actually much older, but it’s been 403 years since the white folks showed up and we tend only to celebrate ourselves.) Now […]

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Cops Gone Wild

8/9/2012 – 1:04 pm

There are police departments, I’m sad to say, that you just don’t want to associate with.  I travel around a good bit and I really want nothing to do with the NYPD, Metro DC, LAPD, San Francisco PD (don’t be gulled by the city’s peace and love reputation) and NOPD (which officially stands for New […]

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Decent Family Men

6/21/2012 – 6:59 pm

Forty-four years ago this spring, my mother loosed a weekly stream of invective against Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY).  A conservative Irish Catholic who had voted for JFK, she thought Bobby had betrayed his earlier, hard-line anti-Communist stance, then carpet-bagged his way in to the Senate.  Now she saw his presidential campaign as more political […]

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Politics By Other Means

6/14/2012 – 1:51 pm

Germany, with two wins and no losses, is looking like the team to beat in the Euro 2012 socc… er, football tournament now underway in host nations Poland and Ukraine.  The Dutch team, with no wins, has been the surprising disappointment – so far.  This ain’t over yet. I admit I’m not a big fan […]

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Just Saying

5/24/2012 – 9:39 pm

I have a book I never finish reading.  (It’s not Finnegan’s Wake; I haven’t even started that one.)  It’s George Orwell’s Essays and as it lands with the thud of 1,363 pages of political, cultural and literary criticism, I feel entitled to a bit of leeway.  I don’t try to plow straight through, but keep […]

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Can I See Some ID?

5/17/2012 – 1:26 pm

I was in Washington a few weeks ago and attended an event at a bar.  I showed up with my colleague Charlie; we’re both in our 50s, our hair is gray or thinning or both, our faces seamed by decades of care.  No one could mistake us for teens, but we pulled out our photo […]

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We Are Still Married

5/10/2012 – 3:00 pm

“I have overwhelming respect for the sanctity of marriage,” says Vin Scully, voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers for 62 years in today’s New York Times.  Mr. Scully was referring to the marital discord of Frank and Jamie McCourt, the gajillionaires who lost control of the Dodgers in a messy divorce. While I have not […]

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