In my continuing efforts to include news from Canada and other countries, here is an interesting article from the Toronto Star, a daily newspaper with also a large online following. It relates in detail how Canadians have successfully gotten people vaccinated. Apparently, Canada has many of the same problems as the United States getting people…

There is no shortage of political crises to talk about, including infrastructure, climate, healthcare, the economy and political reform as well as the perennial questions about the nature of government itself. The most serious immediate challenge, however, is the ongoing crisis with our two major political parties. The breakdown of our two-party system is a…

If there are two things that we must never let those who voted for Trump and his supporters forget, it’s the twin atrocities of the January 6 attack on the Capitol and his unconscionable handling of the coronavirus pandemic. They may be able to make excuses and downplay his other actions, but these two actions…

I have always sided with conservative scholars when it comes to proposing changes in the Constitution or long held political traditions. Why change something that has served us so well for a long time. Frequent calls to eliminate the electoral college still seem risky to me. The Framers had good reasons for embracing it. Recent…

I found this to be an interesting take on things, something worthy of our Sunday reading time. Forwarded by my friend George Shafer from Almonte, Ontario, it was published in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. David M. Shribman, the author, is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning writer and teaches at McGill University in Montreal….

I just got back up to Potlatch a couple days ago and have been settling in doing chores and enjoying the beautiful fall weather. It’s a good time to catch up and so I went into Dahlonega this morning to get my Covid booster shot at the local Walgreens. Since the Covid vaccines have become…

I resumed writing these pages in earnest initially as a response to the 2016 election. Like many Americans I couldn’t believe that Trump won. My concern was quickly borne out as his administration took form and coalesced into a political nightmare for the country. His subsequent denial and behavior toward the coronavirus pandemic further convinced…

There are many folks who for any number of reasons could never be Democrats. Some understandably don’t agree with the party’s support of a larger role for the national government in regulating the economy, taking responsibility for health care, support for environmental and climate actions and a host of other issues. Others simply dislike anything…

I sometimes think that we should just forget about politics and get on living our lives. Yet, the darn truth is that politics really drives how we can live our lives. Yesterday, I had lunch at a local food truck that was a wonderful respite from the sordid nature of contemporary politics. It made me…

The recent recall election for the governor of California raises an interesting question. What if there had been the possibility of a recall vote on the former president near the end of his term? The idea of recalling public officials goes back to the Progressive movement* of the first couple decades of the twentieth century…