Hearings are not a trial and the Benghazi Committee’s interrogation of Hillary Clinton was not supposed to be a prosecution, so why did Chairman Trey Gowdy’s opening statement sound like it was taken from a television courtroom drama? Because this is partisan political drama as good as you are ever going to find.
Government Ethics
What You Believe Is Not Your Opinion, So Whose Is It?
Who decides what you believe about politics and current events? Is your opinion yours, or someone else’s creation? More often than not, the controversies we obsess over aren’t nearly as big as they sound. They seem important, but they don’t affect a lot of people.
How to Stop Corruption, Graft, and Payoffs Right Now
We expect corruption from foreign governments. Dictators, payoffs, and graft in South America and more corruption, terrorist infiltration, and money laundering in the Middle East are facts of life. When we hear about them we are not surprised.
Corruption is a fact of life here in America, too.
Drug Abuse Fun: It’s Not Just for Users
Drugs come in and out of vogue. This makes things fun for those who abuse them and interesting for those who make it their mission to stamp out drug abuse. Heroin and prescription drugs are big now, or at least that’s what we hear from experts who claim to know about these things.
First Responders are Heroes, Villains, and Tokens
What do the Zadroga Health and Compensation Act, 21st Century Policing, and a murdered policeman in Houston have in common? They speak to our current national uproar over the first responders we turned into heroes after 9/11. With another anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks approaching, the image of police as heroes has been tarnished by politics.
Security, Protecting Privacy Are Not the Real Problems
Too many bureaucratic acronyms are being tossed about lately, like NSA, TSA, DHS, and one that isn’t a federal agency, PII.* When you hear these being used by lawmakers you can bet it has something to do with their failed obligations to protect your privacy or our nation’s security.
Powers of Congress We Should Take Back
Don’t worry. This is not a civics lesson about the powers of Congress. There is no point to that because our government is too far gone to resemble the Washington we learned about in school. As far as our Congress is concerned, the only measuring stick that matters is how many times and how hard lawmakers have dropped the ball.