So it was, at 5:58 p.m., July 19, 2016, that Jeff Sessions, U.S. Senator from Alabama, officially nominated Donald J. Trump as the Republican Party’s candidate for President of the United States. While a heavy majority of GOP delegates rose to their feet with a lusty cheer, an obvious rump stayed on their rumps, arms […]

I think I’ll write a hit Broadway musical called Convention, Gavel, or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Nomination. Regardless of the name, one of the songs will start with, Rules, glorious Rules, so frumpy and unctuous / Tool of the elites, who live to boss the bumptious. What happened yesterday could be a […]

You know what is more fun than driving in a metropolitan area for the first time? Doing it in the dark during a rain storm that makes you hanker for gopher wood. I decamped around 5:30 a.m., hoping to roll into the DoubleTree on the lakefront in time to stumble over my thoughts for Larry […]

My soundtrack for the drive up to Cleveland was Hamilton: An American Musical. My oldest daughter, Madelaine, is an evangelist for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterwork. The writing is vibrant, the music is beguiling, the vocal performances are remarkable, and the emotion generated, even by the soundtrack (after all, I am not wealthy enough to afford the […]

Stock markets hit record highs this week, and yet most people aren’t excited about it.  Google “the most hated bull market in history” and you’ll find many reasons for pessimism–we just don’t trust this market.  In normal times, this would indicate we are still healthy, as legendary investor Sir John Templeton once said: “Bull markets […]

Earlier in the week I wrote a post about the decline of the rule of law and increase in the rule of man in the United States’ governing structure.  I would like to continue that thought as it related to the individual human being.  Question:  Why is the rule of law so important?  Answer:  Because […]

Charles Murray has shown a division in the United States between the ordinary citizen and the “rich and/or famous” people (Murray, Coming Apart).  The latter increasingly isolate themselves, physically and in other ways, from the rest of us.  They also tend to live more extravagant lives, to the point sometimes of trampling on the “little […]

The recent decision by FBI Director James B. Comey recommending against charging Sec. Hillary Clinton for violations of the law while she served as Secretary of State under President Barak Obama, calls into question the rule of law in this country.   Our country was founded on the concept of rule of law.  Our mother country, […]

I don’t know how many of you lived in the mid- to late 1960s, during the summers of rioting in large (and sometimes small) cities in America, but this week I have had the same feeling I had then, at age 10-12.  It seemed as if our very civilization was threatened, even if it wasn’t.  […]

America weeps. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. Five Dallas police officers. The first two men were killed by law enforcement officers, the last five killed trying to secure a protest based on the first two deaths. America searches for solutions. Struggling with words to grapple with such a time as this, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said, “We […]