There are countless examples of the “fraternal fight” – brother fighting brother, friend fighting friend – that epitomized the Civil War, which began in April of 1861 with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Among the least known, but most memorable, example is that ...
This week (May 22) in 1964, in a commencement address at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson unveiled what would be the keystone of his domestic policy. Titled “The War on Poverty,” it outlined how the government would create a “Great Society” through new legislation ...
Being a writer, I am sometimes asked my favorite poets, and I reply Elizabeth Bishop, William Butler Yeats, Robert Lowell, and my all-time favorite … Shel Silverstein, who died this week (May 10) in 1999. The first three poets are profound; Silverstein is clever.Silverstein once told an ...
This week (May 5) in 1789, our first Congress passed our first law, the Oath Act, which prescribes the oath of office incoming government officials must take – the exception being the president, whose oath is prescribed in Article II, Sec. 1, of the Constitution. The Oath Act passed quickly, ...
Imagine you are a Vietnam vet, probably drafted because you didn’t have a student deferment or weren’t from a rich family that could afford high-priced lawyers to show you legal ways to avoid the draft, or high-priced doctors who could help you fake medical ailments or show you how to ...
Holocaust Memorial Day, which this year is observed in Israel on April 21 (International Holocaust Memorial Day is Jan. 27) is meant to remind us of the Holocaust orchestrated by Nazi Germany that murdered some six million Jews during World War II. But throughout history, Holocaust-like pogroms ...
