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Michael Connelly turned Harry Bosch into a criminal

Michael Connelly you disappoint me. I’ve been a huge fan for the past fifteen years. I have read every novel. There is something compelling about your primary protagonist Harry Bosch. And yes, there is a dark side to him. This is not new. He has his demons, that go back to Vietnam. That go back to his mother’s murder. He has his mission. “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” I get…

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It's been awhile

It’s been awhile

Somehow I have moved away from blogging on my own site, tending to use the professional political page I created on Facebook. Lest you think this site has disappeared into the dustbins of the internet, I’m back.

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Welcome to the Gutenberg Editor

Of Mountains & Printing Presses

The goal of this new editor is to make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable. This whole post is composed of pieces of content—somewhat similar to LEGO bricks—that you can move around and interact with. Move your cursor around and you’ll notice the different blocks light up with outlines and arrows. Press the arrows to reposition blocks quickly,…

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The Hypocrisy of neutrality

This has been on my mind for a long time, and it is time that I say something.

For the last three years I have been extremely active in a coexistence program that brings Israeli teens (Jewish and Arab) to the U.S. for a two week intensive immersion in shared society, living together, working together, doing service projects, public speaking. I have found it to be a very valuable experience, for…

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Listening to the narratives

As those of you who follow me on Facebook might have been able to tell from my photo posts, the last week has been quite the adventure. I was able to participate on an Academic Partner for Peace study trip to Israel, focused on conflict-resolution and peacemaking. I traveled with a group of faculty from across the U.S. and Canada, joined by two close friends from the Jewish Federations of North…

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The Failure of Trumpcare, or how the Republicans ate their own

So, after seven years, and with 60 or so prior votes to repeal or alter Obamacare, when it really matters, Trump and Ryan come up short, and are forced to pull the bill seeking passage of the American Health Care Act (which would replace Obamacare). It is important to realize that this legislative failure does not represent a change of heart on behalf of the Republicans. To the contrary, the…

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Have we learned anything from 2016?

A month after the election I wrote a blogtrying to make sense of what happened. I reflected on Mark Lilla’s New York Time’s op-ed, “the end of identity liberalism,” a controversial essay that placed the blame for Clinton’s loss on her towing the progressive left line, and ignoring the working class. He wrote, “… the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation…

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Perjury, presidential delusions, and theater of the surreal

The past several days has been a whirlwind of political accusations and the theater of the surreal. First it was revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearings, claiming he had never had any communications with the Russians, when in fact he had two meetings. Sessions knowingly and willfully misled the Senate, while under oath. Those are the…

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Lying with numbers

“The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century.”

These are the words uttered by President Donald Trump in his first address to Congress on February 28th. It seems scary. It suggests that there is a huge problem in America, where crime is out of control, and where “carnage” rules the day. Here is the problem. It isn’t true.

Yes, the Uniform…

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Stop falling for the distractions!

Sweden is a distraction.

Bowling Green is a distraction.

His inability to utter a coherent sentence is a distraction.

The press conference was a distraction.

STOP FALLING FOR THESE DISTRACTIONS. You are playing right into Steve Bannon’s playbook. Bannon knows full well that if we focus our energies on these things, we are not focused on what matters. We are not focused on Russian interference…

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Subtle ways to delegitimizing the judicial branch

What is going on here, and why are people ok with this? The media is reporting, and I have confirmed it with my own eyes, that the White House has removed the Judicial Branch from the tab “Our Government.”

Here is the White House website right now. Look, we no longer have three branches of government. We have two. The Executive and the Legislative branch.

Here is the White House website as

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A ten day bender...

A ten day bender…

Every day since January 20th, I wake up and think I have a case of the delirium tremens, or the “D.T.’s.” In the words of the immortal Irish song-writer Christy Moore,

“I dreamt a dream the other night, and I couldn’t sleep a wink, because the rat’s were trying to count the sheep and I was off the drink. There were footsteps in the parlor and voices on the stairs. I was climbing up the walls…

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What we do matters

Today was the day the world recognizes as the International Holocaust Memorial Day. The day when the world remembers the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazi’s in World War II. It is a day in which we pause to reflect on one of the greatest horrors in human history. The systematic executions of 6 million human beings for no other reason than the fact that the fascists in Germany were…

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And that was Day 6.

Thursday is one of my teaching days. I taught three classes today, each 75 minutes long, with a 75 minute break in between. They were all pretty good classes. Yet, each time I went to class and came back to more breaking news. This is insanity.

It started before my first class with the following:

“The Media is our opposition!” says the NAZI-in-chief advisor. Yes, there is a neo-Nazi advising…

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Welcome to the American spring?

January 21, 2017. Was this the beginning of the American spring? Was it a resurgence of democracy in which American people from across the country insisted that they will not allow Donald Trump to take away their rights, and set the country’s progress back a generation? Was it the beginning of a left-leaning tea party?

Whether it was the beginning of an American awakening, or not, the numbers…

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The American experiment at risk

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men [and women] are created equal, that they endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” Those immortal words, penned by Thomas Jefferson in the summer of 1776 provide the foundation of the American experiment. Jefferson continued, writing “That to secure these…

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A brief primer on the electoral college

I do not really expect there to be fireworks in the 50 state capitols next Monday, but if there are, here is what you need to know.

First, the electoral college is mandated by both Article II, and by the 12th and 20th amendments to the Constitution. The Twelfth Amendment is what matters, as it in effect, replaced the rules from Article II. So read it.

What is the process?

The Electors shall…

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