National News
Is That All There Is?
The words of Peggy Lee’s song are haunting, but they come to mind, not in a philosophical/mystical sense, though they are that, but politically. I’ve been in politics, around politics for 49 years. Beginning with the lieutenant governor’s office in Sacramento in 1966, through Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign to five years on Capitol Hill in […]
Musings at Eighty
The larger the island of knowledge, the greater the shoreline of wonder. Dr. Ralph Washington Sockman Christ Church, Methodist, New York City (1916-61) As I approached my eighty birthday (July 29), friends said, “This is the big one, the Big Eight O.” But I didn’t see it that way. My family often complains; I am […]
Religion, Politics & Media
Sometime back I wrote about this here in the Sentinel, but it is for me an important issue, so I am revisiting it. A religion reporter for a major American newspaper wrote a story about an openly gay United Methodist minister who lost her church over her sexual orientation. The reporter wrote the minister was […]
Is This Any Way to Run a Country?
On March 30 the House of Commons dissolved and Great Britain entered five weeks of campaigning to determine a new government. David Cameron’s five years as prime minister in the coalition government was over; it was time for voters to decide who governs next. With the dissolution, May 7 was set as the day the […]
Black Pastors Group President, Erin Brockovich, Others Call for Fluoridegate Hearings
Federal health officials, in close communication with dental industry representatives, worked feverishly to blunt spread of news that African Americans are disproportionately harmed by drinking fluoridated water, according to recently obtained Freedom of Information Act documents. The documents show clearly-worried high level Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) employees working […]
Civic Idiots
This is the 40th year of The City Club of San Diego, but despite the fact we’ve presented 1,193 programs in the public interest, and despite The City Club’s standing as one of the America’s top public forums (number three by one rating organization, and the only one west of the Mississippi), The City Club […]
I’m Not An Expert, But…
How many times have you heard a speaker say, “I’m not an expert, but…” The speaker then proceeds to discuss the subject they have already admitted they’re unqualified to talk about. It’s a dumb thing to say. Just say what you are going to say. It will stand on its merits – or not. That […]
The Pope of Hope & Our Democracy
In my first column of the New Year, I address two themes – the Pope and the state of our democracy. They are not inherently related, beyond the fact that some of what His Holiness has said applies to issues in America. I don’t think it’s a small thing when a Methodist, as I am, […]
Strangers in Dallas, Embroiled in the Death of a President
Veteran San Diego publicist Laura Walcher and her husband, Bob, were living in Dallas at the time of the Kennedy assassination and had their own encounter with the celebrated Zapruder film. The following is an essay Laura Walcher wrote about her experience. Here’s how it went: WFAA-TV broadcast engineer Bob Walcher took a roll of […]
Frank Mankiewicz – Mentor & Friend
Frank Mankiewicz was Latin American director of the Peace Corps, president of National Public Radio (NPR), nationally syndicated columnist (he made Richard Nixon’s infamous “enemies list”; described by the president’s chief of staff as a “known revolutionary”), author of “Perfectly Clear: Nixon From Whittier to Watergate,” an executive of Hill & Knowlton, one of the […]
