For more than half my life I was a 99-percenter. I kept my first pay stubs in the news business to remind me where I came from and what was necessary in order to get where I am today.

In 1975, while working at a TV station in Houston, I wrote a letter to a friend in Washington complaining about my stalled career and low salary. “I will probably die here with my boots on, boots bought on a revolving charge and not fully paid for,” I griped. My memory is not that good. He kept the letter and showed it to me a few years ago. We laughed. Read More»

Now it’s Newt’s turn. Having risen to the top in some opinion polls, the former speaker of the House is taking heat for large consulting fees paid to him by the government-sponsored mortgage company Freddie Mac for wisdom a New York Times editorial said was so simplistic it might have come from a fortune cookie. Read More»

If ever there was a time when “see, I told you so” was warranted, it is now as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports this past week that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon.

That so many in the State Department over several administrations could deceive themselves into believing claims by the Iranians that their intentions are nothing but peaceful and their sole objective is to develop more sources of electricity for their country reminds me of the Munich Agreement of 1938. Read More»

When it comes to sex, the media apply different standards to Republicans and Democrats.

Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton allegedly trolled for women, using state troopers as his procurers. As president, Clinton engaged in oral sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. He lied about it under oath and was impeached, though later acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Other sexual accusations tainted Clinton, including one that he raped one Juanita Broaddrick. Read More»

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. Barack Obama said, “... There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there is the United States of America.”

Those were welcome and commendable words. Unfortunately, they appear to be only words. Since then, Obama has divided us along race and class lines more than any modern president.

Some of his strongest, high-profile supporters in the black community are now saying that Obama’s race, alone, should be enough for black voters to vote for his re-election. Read More»

It was said of Al Smith, a Roman Catholic, that if he won the 1928 presidential election he would take orders from the Vatican and not uphold the Constitution.

John F. Kennedy famously confronted that anti-Catholic prejudice in a 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Kennedy said in part, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president — should he be Catholic — how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote ...” Read More»

The death of one of the great innovators of our time, or any time — Steve Jobs — brings a question asked by Pete Seeger in another context. To paraphrase: Where have all the (creative) people gone; long time passing?

Jobs and fellow computer innovator Bill Gates represent if not a vanishing breed, then at least one that might be classified, were it an exotic animal, as endangered. Read More»

Listening to some establishment Republicans grousing about the field of GOP presidential candidates should serve as a warning. Republicans, if they are not careful, are in danger of catching the same virus that infected Democrats in 2008.

That would be a messiah complex, the belief that one man (or woman) can deliver us from our collective economic, social and foreign policy “sins” and bring redemption to a nation from the consequences of too many wrong-headed choices. Read More»

The cultural and media snobs are trying to explain Texas to those who don’t know the difference between a steer and a bull. If you fall into this category, a steer has been castrated — a bull has not. I’ll leave any analogy to East and West Coast elites for you to sort out. Read More»

In the Republican presidential candidates debate last week in Tampa, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical question. Normally, a hypothetical question should not be answered, but in this case it revealed something about the questioner and sparked a controversial, but necessary answer from Rep. Ron Paul. Read More»