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Something for everyone on milestone

I feared that the upcoming 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing might get eclipsed by other celebrations, but apparently the sky is the limit for Apollo 11 remembrances. And why not? This milestone offers something for everyone. Those of us with enough gray hairs and wrinkles to remember the moon landing as “current events” view the New Frontier nostalgically, although we now experience some of the era’s buzzwords with a different perspective. Nowadays the eagerly awaited “splashdown” has less to do with an ocean rendezvous than with the hoped-for results ...

Difference between open mind and empty one

A man named Josef Buzhminski told this story at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. It happened on July 27, 1942, at the fence of the Jewish ghetto in Przemysl, Poland. Buzhminski was watching from hiding as an SS man named Kidash seized a Jewish woman and her 18-month-old son. “She held the baby in her arms,” Buzhminski said, “and began asking for mercy that she be shot first and leave the baby alive. “From behind the fence,” he continued, “there were Poles who raised their hands ready to catch the baby. She was about to hand the baby over to the Poles. He took the baby from her ...

Court rules (unpersuasively) Trump can’t block Twitter critics

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that President Trump violated the 1st Amendment by blocking some critics from access to his Twitter feed. The decision by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals might seem like poetic justice visited on a president who can dish it out but can’t take it. But as a matter of constitutional law, the ruling isn’t persuasive. In 2017, a group of Twitter users who had been blocked from seeing and responding directly to Trump’s tweets filed suit in federal court in New York. One plaintiff was blocked after she responded to a Trump tweet crowing ...

Go ahead, you write a speech for president

In Washington, the National Mall has gone quiet. The Blue Angels have flown back to base, the Abrams tanks have been returned to Fort Stewart, Ga., and President Trump’s 4th of July speech has been debunked by fact-checkers and even panned by Russian state-run TV. The memes it inspired might prove more enduring than the speech itself. Even in conservative circles, I suspect, the speech will not be long remembered. It is too muddled, nondescript and full of errors to be recited on future Independence Day speeches. Not to worry: Trump has promised to stage the whole spectacle again ...

More for some, less for others

If you’re thinking of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, you need maximum compassion, and liberals don’t have it. Promises of more money for lots of people can make voters ridiculously happy if they don’t understand that more for some always means less for others. So the liberals get elected and ruin lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged of our fellow citizens. Here’s a big issue just underlined in a report by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office. It says increasing the current $7.25 minimum wage by that much could fatten the wallets of 17 million ...

Cannabis? Weed? Pot? Dope? What do you call that stuff?

I was talking with a colleague the other day about the advent of legal recreational marijuana in Illinois when out of my mouth came words that horrified me the minute they emerged. “I’ve never really liked dope,” I said. I wasn’t horrified to admit I don’t like dope — I’m not embarrassed to say I prefer other paths to an altered state — but I cringed to hear myself call it that. I mean, dope? Did saying “dope” make me look old? The minute I said it, I knew it did. It was like wearing a halter top, flowered bell-bottoms, a string of love beads and a middle part in ...