[This is the column that appeared in my local paper, the Prince George’s Sentinel, on Thursday (Sept. 22). The day following, a bus carrying elderly people from an assisted living facility – the one my mother stays in -- was thrust into the Texas highways with hundreds of thousands of other vehicles fleeing Houston at [...]

Amputations in Iraq     Most recent word about Walter Reed Hospital’s former trauma nurses is a mixed bag. The good news is that at least some of them have been sent home from Iraq, physically intact. The stress of their work there has taken such a toll that even the Pentagon has seen the [...]

[This piece also appearing in this week's Prince George's Sentinel: ]    After the scandals of Watergate, with a Fourth Estate somewhat revitalized around the idea of investigative journalism – you don’t get a much better pep pill than having a big-name reporter played by Robert Redford – there was a fairly widespread understanding that [...]

Ordinarily I don’t do product placement. But in the interests of saving time and energy, and since I’ve already done some of the scoping out online anyway, I am forwarding the information below to anyone who might be interested in long-distance purchase for delivery or drop-off.   You can shorten the process of donating by [...]

Ever since Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the courts as the arbiter of what the written law says, a core principle of U.S. government has been the independence of its judiciary.   There is not time enough in a single blog to list all the actual limits on that theoretical independence. In fact, there’s [...]

DistributorContacts     Timely distribution of essentials is key. Thousands of the refugees in Houston are being sheltered at the Astrodome, which does not have refrigeration facilities adequate for the crowd. So any food donations for the Astrodome need to be non-perishable snacks, ready-to-eat or shelf-stable bottled juices. Drop off supplies at Gate 11, between [...]

Los tres presidentes will be asking for money, money, money for hurricane relief, and let’s hope they ask for some from the oil companies.   Meanwhile, the basic needs of water, food and shelter have to be fulfilled before financial donations can be processed. You can participate by joining a group near you to collect [...]

Getting water promptly to the victims and refugees of Hurricane Katrina is essential. One relief effort being coordinated in the rural South is the bottled water drive through Delta State University, in Cleveland, Mississippi – on Highway 61, about an hour and a half south of Memphis.   The campus Student Government Association is partnering [...]

Once again, we are all paying a price for the small-time chicanery of big corporations, and not solely with regard to surging (gouging) gasoline prices. Capital Plaza, at 6200 Annapolis Road in Landover Hills, Maryland, is geographically far removed from the initial impact of Hurricane Katrina, but it is still a microcosm of what could [...]