Category Archives: Commentary

Do-Overs

5/11/2006 – 10:30 am

On Monday, would-be 9-11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui said he lied under oath about his al Quaeda membership and asked a federal judge to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried on his original charges. Mr. Moussaoui essentially asked the court for a do-over. Judge Leonie Brinkema turned him down. It’s difficult to […]

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Over the Line

5/4/2006 – 5:45 am

I don’t know what America’s policy should be toward immigrants. Clearly, “days without immigrants” would cripple our economy, but how do we keep from being overwhelmed? How do we establish a policy that’s fair? Perhaps the way to find the answer is to begin at the extremes and work our way in, eliminating the unworkable […]

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First They Came for the Airlines

4/27/2006 – 10:57 am

George W. Bush, who proclaimed America’s “oil addiction,” in his January State of the Union address, exhibited a classic symptom of addiction Tuesday: denial. As the price of a gallon of gas heads for (and beyond) three dollars, Mr. Bush proposed a truly meaningless agenda, asking oil companies to invest some of their outrageous profits […]

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Where to Start

4/20/2006 – 1:52 pm

The United States now stands at one of the lowest points in our 230-year history. Everything is broken, what should we fix first? (We could fire Don Rumsfeld, but the only person who can do it is the only person who doesn’t get it.) We have some influence over the process that got us into […]

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Set of Priorities

4/13/2006 – 10:23 am

A quarter century ago, when I began purchasing cigarettes and gasoline in significant quantities, a pack of smokes and a gallon of gas went for about the same price – 65 or 70 cents. Last week, a gallon gas was selling for about $2.65 in Vermont and while I was filling up, I noticed a […]

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The Rutland Resolution

4/6/2006 – 10:36 am

Grim though the evening news may be these days, perhaps we are turning a corner. Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel. Not in Iraq or the federal budget or the trade deficit, but in the streets. On March 25, Los Angeles played host to the “Gran Marcha,” the largest street protest […]

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Lesson Learned

3/30/2006 – 12:05 pm

Vermont is the most progressive state in the union, which is a sad commentary on the state of America’s progressives. Spain, which endured four decades of fascist dictatorship in the 20th century, has a national law permitting same-sex marriage, in many parts of America; same-sex marriage is seen as a portent of the apocalypse. Vermont […]

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