It’s a simple fact that an across the board cut of a few percent of the federal budget would have very little effect on anything. This is especially true given the fact that federal spending has risen by more than 35 percent since liberal Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. But President Obama and his cronies put so much effort into sequester scare-mongering that they had to ensure there would be an effect.
In Reykjavik, Iceland there is the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which boasts the world’s largest collection of penises. For around $20 you can gawk at the members of many different species: some human. Most in jars. Some more jarring than others.
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents and at the feet of their elementary school teachers. There is no more important task for an elementary teacher than to “hook” students with exciting literature and instill in them a love for reading and for learning.
Karen Houppert has written a book of nightmares.
Houppert, a veteran reporter for, among others, The Washington Post and The New York Times, is the author of “Chasing Gideon: the Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice,” which comes out this week coincident with the anniversary of a legal milestone. It was 50 years ago Monday that the case of Gideon v. Wainwright was decided.
Over one-fourth of homeless Americans have risked their lives for our safety and security through the U.S. Armed Forces.
RALEIGH — Whether the setting is Raleigh or Washington, the tax reform debate will inevitably come down to one Big Question: Are you willing to trade current tax preferences for lower tax rates?
Perhaps you remember when Dr. Doom conquered the world.
A national political star is born. Kentucky’s’ Republican Sen. Rand Paul became the political Justin Beiber of libertarians everywhere and a role model for GOPers who want to grab media attention by staging a dramatic “talking filibuster.” And, suddenly, Republicans who had steadfastly resisted the idea of bringing back talking filibusters were falling all over themselves to get involved and praise it.
Ah, St. Patrick’s Day is upon us.
That means but one thing: time for Americans to over-celebrate the Irish tradition.
I speak of the goofy Leprechaun hats, the gaudy green buttons and scarves and the propensity to drink excessive amounts of alcohol at fake Irish pubs while trying to be authentically Irish.
Though I’m not entirely without guilt.
A summertime visit to an old neighborhood back in the early 1950s comes to mind. It was the “Chrome” section of town, which hundreds of laborers at the “Copper Works” factory in Carteret, N.J., called their home. Chrome and copper seemed like appropriate names.
My reading has influenced me. No one essay has touched my life more than Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Compensation.” Emerson cites a sermon, where the preacher talks about rewards and punishments in the afterlife. He states that it is a falsehood that the saints are miserable on earth, and that the wicked are successful. He argues that just actions have just rewards. We receive exactly what we put into our efforts in time.
As you already know, sequestration has everybody’s attention, especially in Washington. That makes this job harder to do. The “good” news is: The Veterans Affairs money has not and will not be cut — “yet.”
If you took Sen. Rand Paul duck hunting, he’d probably shoot the decoy.
The desire of intellectuals for some grand theory that will explain complex patterns with some solitary and simple factor has produced many ideas that do not stand up under scrutiny, but which have nevertheless had widespread acceptance — and sometimes catastrophic consequences — in countries around the world.
RALEIGH — During the years that North Carolina was riding high, particularly the 1980s and 1990s, state policymakers wrung their hands about the problems associated with a fast-growing economy.