Early one rainy morning in 1945, on a runway 90 miles north of London near Peterborough, England, 20-year-old Tech Sgt. Dick Dodds discovered that courage is doing your job while your life is on the line.

He was the radio operator in the second aircraft in a 457th Bomb Group flight of 36 B-17s, waiting for tower clearance to roll and take off on another high-risk mission over Nazi Germany when the bomb-laden lead aircraft just ahead suddenly detonated into a huge ball of fire, shrapnel, wreckage and scattered remains of young men who had played volleyball with Dick the day before. Read More»

Our universities are typically diverse in every way except thought, and examples abound of students paying a price for straying from the liberal script. Nevertheless, we have high hopes for our finest schools close to home, like Emory University, where President James Wagner is under fire.

Wagner has been censured by the university faculty, condemned from various quarters of the officially sensitive, and now awaits a confidence vote by the faculty as they press the Board of Trustees to toss him under the bus. Read More»

Sometimes we search for a connection to history and don’t recognize the people around us right here in Fayette County who played a key role. And as Sam Lunsford will tell you, even though he will be 88 years old in April, the memories of combat when he was just 20 years old never fade. They remain just as fresh as yesterday still.
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You may recall the media frenzy over “torture” during the first Obama campaign, with TV talking heads dousing each other self-righteously in personal indignation on a subject they know nothing about. That didn’t stop the masses from following suit, repeating the code words, “We don’t torture!” in dutiful parrot style, as if from their living room couch they knew all about it. Read More»

I don’t know what former Army Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha was thinking when President Obama presented to him last week the Medal of Honor for his “gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life” in the 2009 Battle of Kamdesh in Afghanistan.

But I’ll tell you what I was thinking, aside from my admiration for this 31-year-old man. I was wondering if, this time, the President would have enough respect for the man to call him by the staff sergeant title he had earned. But predictably, Obama called him “Clint.” Read More»

When you talk with Bill Camper, you will most likely be laughing. You may not notice that his right eye has been blind since 1972, but you will understand why Mimi Gentilini (Mimi’s Good Food) describes Bill as the nicest man in town.

At 83 years old, the highlight of Bill’s life is that Peg, his wife for 62 years and counting, has newfound freedom from dialysis, one of very few her age to receive a kidney transplant and it turned out wildly successful. Read More»

My objection to the current gun control effort in Washington, D.C., is only half about guns. The other half is about abuse of power. No matter which side of the gun debate you favor, you should be concerned.

Obama is not alone in trampling the Constitution. He is joined by Congress and former Republican and Democrat administrations alike, but this president has pushed hard on the abuse of power envelope. He has crossed the line a number of times and just this past week two judges advanced court cases against President Obama’s overreach. Read More»

American exceptionalism.

That phrase means to me the extraordinary, delicately balanced system our founders labored to establish and pass on to us to govern ourselves, a radical concept at the time. Our inheritance was a priceless gift, one that called for every generation’s full devotion to nurture and defend.

I used the past tense because we have squandered that inheritance. Read More»

The children are buried, the hoards of reporters and camera crews have moved on to the next story, but Newtown, Conn., will never be the same. The anguish of families that lost a child may subside but will never go away.

How can we make sure mass school murders never happen again? The adult answer is — we can’t.

Since Cain slew Abel in a fit of jealousy, people have been killing each other with sticks, rocks, blades, poisons, bombs, guns and a hundred other tools of choice. New laws won’t stop it. Read More»

In this season of gifts, there is one steadily given throughout the year, little noticed except by families in mourning. Bo Hill, Bill Camper, Al Hogg, Joe Bowler and Stony Lohr, all members of Peachtree City Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9949, provide honor guard service at local funerals for veterans. Read More»