Category Archives: Commentary

You Dirty Rat

8/5/1999 – 5:02 pm

Did you hear they’re replacing laboratory rats with lawyers? It seems there are some things rats just won’t do. Okay, that’s a joke, and perhaps not a good one. But sometimes truth is stranger than humor and as it turns out, rats are being replaced, not with lawyers, but with plastic.

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The F Word

7/29/1999 – 5:04 pm

The news from the war zone is that the Air Force’s F-22 fighter was shot out of the sky over Capitol Hill last week by the House of Representatives. Given the peculiar nature of congressional warfare, a fighter that crashed and burned last week may fly again if the House-Senate conference committee chooses to reverse […]

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Vote Early, Vote Often

7/22/1999 – 5:05 pm

I was watching tee vee with a bunch of Democrats on Election Night 1988, the year the original George Bush trounced Michael Dukakis in the polls. All the anchors came on the air before 7 p.m. and announced Mr. Bush would be our next president. “That’s not fair!” screamed the angry Democrats. “The polls on […]

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Building Walls, Drawing Lines

7/15/1999 – 5:07 pm

Much as I hate to admit it, G. Gordon Liddy was right. It was November 1985; Mr. Liddy was in the midst of his endless speaking tour. I was a young reporter. Gordon had dire predictions about everything; most turned out to be paranoid fantasies. When he spoke about the recently-discovered AIDS virus, he said, […]

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Secrets and Lies

7/8/1999 – 5:08 pm

It was the Indiana humorist Kin Hubbard who said, “It’s no sin to be poor – although it may as well be.” Bill Clinton is proving the truth of that statement this week as he visits some of the poorest regions in America. More than halfway through his second term, after surviving dozens of scandals, […]

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Hungry for Justice

7/1/1999 – 5:09 pm

The Supreme Court ended its term last week and all the justices and clerks hurried off to wherever those kind of people spend their summer months. That’s too bad, because if they were around this week, the might see the sixth annual fast and vigil held in front of the court by the Abolitionist Action […]

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Gawking

6/24/1999 – 6:05 pm

Summer is here, officially as well as meteorologically. The sun shines hot from a clear sky. We had a dry spring and Lake Champlain is low for this time of year. The garden does well if we keep it watered and the farmers are happily making hay. We’re anticipating a bonus crop of tourists and […]

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