I'm back from Chicago, speaking at the annual conference of the ALA -American Library Association. 20,000 librarians under one roof--totally inspiring. In addition to their deeper-funded and better-staffed cousins from the big cities, they came... Read More

Newsweek recently called out Oprah for being a quack. In a cover story titled "Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures & You," they cited shows she's enthusiastically done on cancer, autism, and other subjects featuring non-experts... Read More

The President spoke eloquently this week on the need for Americans to find common ground on the issue of abortion. He made a start by naming the ONLY common ground--the desire of almost everyone to... Read More

“Where liberty is not, there is mine.” —Thomas Paine, replying to Benjamin Franklin’s remark, “Where liberty is, there is my country.” Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was born on... Read More

For a half-century, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has had the right to decide which words and pictures are excluded from the Free Speech guarantees all Americans enjoy. The FCC's criterion for this cruel abridgment... Read More

The Law of Unintended Consequences comes in many forms, which is the point of the so-called ancient Chinese curse: “May you get what you wish for.” A less dramatic way of expressing this sentiment is... Read More

“The first thing I desire for my children is a kind of openness to experience. I hardly know whether to call this openness the ability to love or the ability to perceive truth, for it... Read More