DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE:Nuclear Treaty's Pluses & Minuses
By Conn Hallinan
Sunday April 18, 2010 - 06:32:00 PM
Amid celebrations around the signing of a new treaty between the U.S. and Russia on reducing the number of nuclear weapons, Hisham Badr, Egyptian ambassador to the United Nations conference on disarmament, played crow on the cradle: "We in the Middle East feel we have, short of a better word, been tricked into giving concessions for promises that never materialized." -more-
SENIOR POWER: "Old People Don't Read Books."
By Helen Rippier Wheeler
The Rippowam River rushed by at the foot of our dank street, or, depending on the season, gurgled its way to Long Island Sound. I would sit on the stone embankment overlooking the water, ignoring the garter snakes in the crevices. The Ferguson Public Library children's room was another 1932 shelter. Story hour was held in a separate room with a large picture window. I played stamping books, using a piece of black crayon stuck on the end of a protractor. It slipped off, jamming crayon into my palm, still imbedded there in a tattoo effect. -more-
WILD NEIGHBORS: Chickens in the Mist
By Joe Eaton
Tuesday April 20, 2010 - 01:06:00 PM
Chickens were not high on the agenda when we went to Kaua'i. We hoped to see some of the endangered native forest birds, and the seabirds that nest on the North Shore. But chickens were inescapable. They greeted us at the airport in Lihue. They wandered around the hotel where we spent the first night. There were chickens on the beaches, chickens along the highway. (But relatively few road-killed chickens—far fewer than the dead armadillos you'd see in a comparable-sized chunk of Texas.) -more-
The Public Eye: BTW, Conservatism is Dead
By Bob Burnett
Wednesday April 14, 2010 - 05:32:00 PM
Recently there's been a lot of speculation about why the mood on the right has turned so sour. Some observers attribute it to the lack of leadership at the top of the Republican Party, the surreal reality that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have more influence than do elected Republicans. Others say it's a poisonous combination of economic angst and racial hatred. But there's a more obvious explanation: we're witnessing the death throes of conservatism. The right-wing ideology that ran the US for thirty years has proven to be a total failure and the passage of healthcare reform was the final nail in its coffin. -more-
Dispatches From The Edge:Behind the Afghan Fraud
All frauds have a purpose, mostly to relieve the unwary of their wealth, though occasionally to launch some foreign adventure: the 1965 Tonkin Gulf hoax that escalated the Vietnam War comes to mind. -more-
New: Senior Power: "Old People Don't Read Books"