What in the world just happened here?

January 13, 2020

So what in the world just happened here? That’s the question of the moment as we struggle to get our heads around the latest head-snapping episode in the bizarre presidency of Donald Trump. In the last few days, we’ve seen: 1) a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, killing Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force; 2) Trump’s justification of the killing on grounds that Soleimani, architect of hundreds of American military casualties, was planning imminent violence; 3) bellicose threats from Trump to bomb Iranian cultural sites; 4) vows of revenge from Tehran, and, 5) Iranian ...

Cold dogs need warm folks to care for them

January 13, 2020

Rebel is one of the lucky ones. Starved, neglected and chained outdoors in rural Tennessee in the freezing cold, the bone-thin dog likely wouldn’t have survived more than another day or two. But last month, a kind man who was working on a power line nearby noticed him, along with two others, also chained on the property. The man and his coworker gave their lunches to the dogs and poured their bottled water into the dogs’ bowls so they could quench their thirst. Then the man did something that changed the lives of Rebel and the other dogs: He notified humane authorities, who ...

Did Trump walk into a trap?

January 10, 2020

Without (initially) firing a shot, Iran appears to have executed a devastating revenge attack against the United States for the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani. Using Iraq’s democratic process, Iranian-influenced members of parliament on Sunday voted to expel American soldiers from Iraq. With that, Iran may have effectively won the battle of influence in Iraq. This strategic coup de grace was delivered not by rockets or suicide vests, but by legitimate votes in a democracy built by the United States. Assuming the Iraqi prime minister signs this nonbinding bill into law American ...

Tone-deaf Democrats risk handing western Pa. to Trump

January 9, 2020

Darrin Kelly, president of the powerful Allegheny-Fayette County Central Labor Council, says that not one of the Democratic candidates running for president has reached out to him to ask about or listen to what union families in western Pennsylvania are looking for in a nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in November. “Not one,” he says abruptly. That omission is obvious in just about every proclamation about the energy sector coming from the mouths of most Democratic candidates, whether it is Sens. Bernie Sanders’ and Elizabeth Warren’s pledging to ban fracking, or ...

Anxiety grips leaderless America in wake of events

January 8, 2020

George W. Bush and Barack Obama both had Gen. Qassem Soleimani in their gunsights. Neither ordered the trigger pulled because of the enormous risks involved in killing one of Iran’s top leaders. In listing the possible responses to recent Iranian provocations, U.S. military commanders told President Donald Trump that doing this would be the most dangerous. Trump did it on Friday. Iran predictably returned fire with dire threats to U.S. interests. Trump then tweeted in big capital letters that he would retaliate against the retaliation by bombing Iran’s cultural sites, among other ...

Add Iran’s leadership to ash heap of history

January 7, 2020

Addressing the British Parliament in 1982, President Ronald Reagan outlined a plan for placing the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism on the “ash heap of history.” It is an objective President Trump might pursue against the mullahs in Iran, who are subsidizing terrorism in the Middle East and threatening to export it elsewhere. The latest military and verbal volleys between the United States and Iran started when a branch of the Hezbollah terrorist group (called “militants” by some reporters), attacked the American Embassy in Baghdad. Unlike the 2012 terrorist assaults in ...