Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu The hawks in Congress and the media have been jumping all over President Obama for the agreement the United States is working out with Iran on curtailment of its progress toward the capability to produce a nuclear bomb. Even stronger opposition came last week from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin […]
Today’s topic is probably the most frequent grammatical error, which abounds in newspapers and every type of literature to be found. The miscue is ubiquitous, and is the downfall of even top-notch writers. I refer to the failure to insert the conjunction and before the last item in a series in a compound sentence. Okay, […]
CNN’s Dana Bash Dana Bash, a likable correspondent for cable channel CNN, did anything but live up to her name Sunday in quizzing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about the nuclear weapons negotiations the Obama administration is holding with Iran. The Republican Senate created a firestorm last week by sending a letter signed by […]
Don’t be niggardly with the hyphen. Doing so can wreak havoc. On the other hand, insert those little sawed-off lines in the right places, and you’re in hyphen heaven. Let’s deal with the havoc first. An entertainment writer tells us, “Delray Beach’s Pineapple Grove is one of my favorite local places to park my car […]
Sen. Mitch McConnell Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told the U.S. Supreme Court in a brief last week that it shouldn’t impose, nationwide, “a federally mandated redefinition of the ancient institution of marriage.” It ain’t necessarily so. Either knowingly or mistakenly, conservatives often show ignorance of […]
The You Docs The You Docs are making progress, but they’re not there yet. Their last column in my local newspaper had them starting out on a mostly solid footing – and then they stumbled. “Soybean oil is the most used vegetable oil in North America, found in scores of prepared foods,” Drs. Mehmet Oz […]
President Obama Once again, the Republicans in the House of Representatives are showing their true colors – and they ain’t pretty. They long have railed against Obama because the middle and lower classes have so little, and charge him with causing the nation’s debt to spiral out of control. Then they voted last week to […]
Florida Gov. Rick Scott It wasn’t a prominently placed story in the Palm Beach Post – an inside page, three-column headline: “Scott, ACLU end fight over state drug tests.” So I wonder how many of the people who voted in November to give the Florida governor another four years saw it, or are otherwise aware […]
Barry Goldwater Notwithstanding Barry Goldwater’s mantra “Extremism in the cause of liberty is no vice,” it has dire consequences. Look at the extremist political ideology in the United States and the religious fanatacism in the Middle East, and you see the suffering they cause. Cut-throat conversions ISIS beheadings Adherents to the belief […]
Brian Williams Leading voices in the media are probably more dismayed by former NBC-TV news anchor Brian Williams’ misrepresentations of his exploits covering the Iraq War than are the general population. Would that the media were that concerned over their reporting about GMOs and other health issues. They hew to the positions of recognized […]