Author: Burt Likko

Today’s question from the good doctor makes me ask a more basic one. Why do people crave fame? Is fame useful for something else? It’s obviously not always a platform to wealth. It’s not always a...

The Beeb is reporting that Muammar Quaddafi has captured by Libya’s transitional government, hiding in a spider hole much like Saddam Hussein had been. Or maybe he was killed. (UPDATE: Al-Jazeera and the Gray Lady are...

I just finished A Feast For Crows last night. Now I’m considering whether to drop the extra money on A Dance With Dragons, but of course I know I’m going to. Still, I am taking a...

Let’s say you and I are sitting at lunch and you get up to use the restroom. Uninvited, I grab your cell phone and start paging through your text messages and your directory and...

A reversal of policy like this has to have come from either Holder or Obama. And it hasto be motivated by the fact that November 6, 2012, is less than 400 days away. It’s...

A calculus teacher named Bradley Johnson at a public high school in Poway, California decorated his classroom with posters described as: …two large banners, each about seven-feet wide and two feet tall, hung on...

My co-blogger has some excellent thoughts up about online univerisities and non-traditional students. I think it’s front page material. Please take a visit to Not A Potted Plant and give him your thoughts and...

Charlie Whittington owns the Kwik Kar Lube & Service in Plano, Texas, and he circulated a coupon giving any customer who recites John 3:16 a discount on an oil change. Marshall Wei, although aware...

It appears that as part of what used to be called the Global War On Terror and now our permanent state of selective war, an American citizen who we may safely presume was both...

If you are convicted of a misdemeanor in Baldwin County, Alabama (that’s on the east side of Mobile Bay, bordering Florida, with a county seat in the I’m-sure-it’s-lovely city of Bay Minette), the judges...

The English word “republic” is taken from the Latin phrase “res publica,” a concept which embraced the government, the culture, the community, and the aggregate sum of public acts of citizens. After the meeting...

My co-blogger Will Truman has authored a really interesting piece on the United States Post Office. I commend it to you all.

The war in Afghanistan (remember that one?) clearly is resulting in, at long last, a decrease in the opium poppy trade, and the concomitant decrease in the global supply of recreational heroin. Apparently, heroin...

The government, and people acting on behalf of the government, may not endorse religion, and may not favor religion over non-religion. By the same token, they may not endorse atheism nor favor non-religion over...

The state of Alabama has enacted a new law which would restrict the flow of various benefits to people not legally present in the country. You can read the entire text of the new...

Here in California, Governor Brown has just signed a law mandating that the history curriculae of the public schools include coverage of “the contributions of gay, lesbian and transgendered Americans.” Below the fold, I have some thoughts about this...

Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized drugs, including “hard” drugs like cocaine and heroin. Since then, drug-related crime is down substantially, addiction is down, and drug-related health problems (i.e., infections from unsterilized heroin needles) are...

Those who are interested in such things are welcome to persue my annual meditation on the United States’ Declaration of Independence.

In Norway, teachers are trained and encouraged to teach non-traditional gender roles to four-year-olds. This includes the use of books that caused tremendous controversy here in the USA, like “King and King.” Generally this...

If I told you that hundreds of abducted, runaway or thrown-away children in the United States fall into prostitution annually, you’d probably respond with empathy for that issue. How awful that kids — just-pubescent or...