Memorial Day: What's Truly At Stake

As is fitting the occasion, today we can read about distant and contemporary heroes, people whose sacrifices range from the common to the extraordinary, in battles of at once ferocious and horrifying. Beyond the heroic actions of our military personnel are the broader themes that infuse Memorial Day, and those include freedom and its corollary, responsibility.

Why Obama Can Rightfully Claim Victory

Barack Obama is not quite ready to claim victory yet in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. However, he would be justified in doing so -- and that's even if the results from Michigan and Florida are figured into the equation. All one has to do is crunch a few numbers to see why.

Ethanol's roadkill

The corn-ethanol lobby is well organized, aggressive and nasty. Last year, I wrote three articles saying that corn-ethanol production takes farmland out of food production, uses huge amounts of increasingly scarce water, and leaves poor people in countries such as Mexico hungry because their cost of food increases beyond their means as corn and other grains are diverted to fuel.

War, Peace and Oil

I have read of it in various publications, had the merits of it explained to me by many distinguished speakers, have been induced to believe that it is of common acceptance, and for the better part of my early life on earth I actually believed that the essence was doable:

"Obama doesn't like me"