This week, my mother called around 10 a.m. one morning to chat for a minute and catch up. During our conversation, I realized that she was still in her bed, waiting for an aide to help into a wheelchair.
This is the story of courage. This is a story of tenacity. This is the story of Hill Daniel.
I wrote a column not too long ago bemoaning the fact that my grandchildren were growing up. Well, I have more proof.
The liberal world vision and reality are often at variance, as, for example, with equal pay for equal work.
My wife and I have been vacationing the past week in south Florida. On the first night of the eight-day trip, we took the hotel clerk's dinner recommendation and headed to the restored riverfront in historic Fort Myers.
As a kid, I hated Sunday mornings with a passion I now reserve only for unimaginable evils such as genocide and raw onions. Sunday - "the day of rest" - was far from restful for me, and I blame it on a weekly ritual, "dressing up for Sunday school."
There are many ways to describe the enormous gap between the American people and their elected politicians.
I grew up with hamsters, so when my kid decided he wanted one for his birthday in December last year, I was totally OK with that.
Little is left to the imagination these days. The ever deeper probing of scientists is removing any mystery from life and banishing the unknown and heretofore unknowable.
Humans have long reached toward heaven. I don't know whether this desire represents an attempt to get away from the ground, an attempt to associate with God, or an attempt to peer over the balcony and look at all the little people below. But the desire to go higher and higher has long shaped the skylines of our cities.
Since I last wrote a column about my husband's cabin, he has made additions.
When I finished high school, I left my childhood behind. It was an unconscious decision, but one I recognize now was necessary for me to evolve into the person I was meant to be.
Over the past 10 years, I have written columns variously titled "Academic Cesspools," "Academic Dishonesty," "The Shame of Higher Education," "Academic Rot" and "Indoctrination of Our Youth."
Let your mind wander back to kindergarten, and think about those simpler times and all the fun you had. It doesn't matter where you come from; you have to admit that kindergarten was fun. You played with toys, sang songs, colored pictures of fire trucks, and learned radically new concepts like sharing and the letter Q.
I walked down my back steps last week and saw a daffodil blooming. I know that in itself is not unusual. What makes it unusual is that it was blooming in the bed of my husband's pickup truck.
As many of you recall, I opposed the recent charter school amendment, not because I oppose charter schools - I don't - but because I thought the wording of the amendment was duplicitous. I thought it grossly unfair that Gov. Nathan Deal could wax eloquently on the need for passage of the amendment but School Superintendent John Barge was not allowed to talk about opposing it. It was like Goliath beating up David.
It was front page news last summer when Chick-fil-A restaurants across America became the flashpoint for one of our nation's most divisive issues. Following statements by the restaurant chain's President, Dan Cathy, opposing same sex marriage, gay rights groups organized a nationwide boycott. To counter, conservatives opposed to same-sex marriage flooded the nearest Chick-fil-A to make a statement. It got ugly.
Let's expose presidential prevarication. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama warned that Social Security checks will be delayed if Congress fails to increase the government's borrowing authority by raising the debt ceiling. However, there's an issue with this warning. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, assets in Social Security's trust funds totaled $2.7 trillion, and Social Security expenditures totaled $773 billion. Therefore, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit, Social Security ...
This week the Georgia General Assembly reconvened after a one-week recess to review Governor Nathan Deal's recommendations for the Amended FY13 Budget and FY14 Budget. We are on Day 9 of the 2013 session, but already my colleagues and I are hard at work filing legislation, meeting with our committees, and listening to the needs of our constituents.
I titled this column after Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's famous song because it properly reflects the story I'll tell, and because I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one on the planet who has realized the truth about home schooling.
The New York Times mobile app sent me a breaking news update Wednesday morning: "U.S. Economy Unexpectedly Contracted in Fourth Quarter." Based on high government third-quarter spending and government policies and politics occurring during the fourth quarter, the slowdown should come as no surprise.
Whenever there's talk about improving accountability in government, the call goes out for increased transparency: Nothing should be hidden, all records should be easily accessible, the processes should be crystal clear, roles and responsibilities of government officials should be easy to define, any motives or personal agendas should be discernible and avoided, and the chain of command clearly visible.
A bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators has proposed an immigration reform plan that appears to broadly reflect what voters would like to see. But there's a catch.
An article in the AJC last week noted that $2.7 million was spent by proponents of the charter school amendment as compared with $262,822 spent by those who opposed the amendment. Among those who contributed to the proponent campaign were K12 Inc. and Charter Schools USA, both for profit companies that manage charter schools. Walmart heiress Alice Walton contributed $600,000. Other large contributors were StudentsFirst of Sacramento, Calif., American Federation for Children, PublicSchoolsOptions.org of Arlington, ...
Knock! Knock! Knock! "Hello. Can I help you?" "Hi. Are you Teya Ryan, president of Georgia Public Broadcasting?" "Yes, I am. Who are you?" "I am Chip Rogers, your new employee. I used to be the majority leader in the state Senate, where I was responsible for such cutting-edge issues as preventing our body parts from being microchipped without our permission and for making people aware that the United Nations intends to take over local ...
Let's look at experts. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematician and scientist. Newton has to be the greatest and most influential scientist who has ever lived. He laid the foundation for classical mechanics, and his genius transformed our understanding of science, particularly in the areas of physics, mathematics and astronomy. What's not widely known is that Newton spent most of his waking hours on alchemy; his experiments included trying to turn lead into gold. ...
Scanning my office bookshelves these days is a trip down Irony Lane - especially when I glance through the cycling section. There's Lance Armstrong's 2001 autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike." Lance, after your long overdue confession to Oprah regarding performance-enhancing drug use and blood doping, we know it was about a lot more than the bike. There's also his 2003 follow up, "Every Second Counts," which cries out for a subtitle such as "And ...
Fascinating. President Obama mentioned our Constitution in the first paragraph of his inaugural address, but in the same paragraph quoted from the Declaration of Independence, noting that we "articulated in a declaration" the following words:
Don't look now, but I think you are beginning to have some impact on the issue of unlimited lobbying expenditures in the Legislature.