Straight From The Hart

This is a tale of three soldiers. All of them have different life stories which are intertwined with each other because all of them have to do with the current President of the United States. First, there is Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi who spent seven months in a Mexican jail, including several torture sessions. He had served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and was credited with saving the life of at least one fellow soldier and was promoted on the battlefield. He was discharged honorably in 2012. In May of 2014, he took a wrong turn because of confusing road signs and ended up in Mexico instead of San Diego, and was arrested and placed in jail there where he was mistreated so badly he was afraid he was going to die. His mother and others continually asked the President to help him but the President refused to even mention his name or talk to his family. He was finally released in November 2014 due to the efforts of several American citizens, including U.S. Representative

My column from today's newspaper:\ Wake Up, Mr. President Wake up, Mr. President. You’ve got to stop hitting the snooze button. You had a good long night’s sleep but morning is coming. By the way, we know you had a good dream because you talked in your sleep for over an hour Tuesday night and it was so funny. Just wait until I tell you the silly things you said. You will love this one. You actually said the shadow of crisis was over. You are so good with words. I can’t believe you messed this one up. A shadow is a dark shape that appears on a surface when someone moves between the surface and a source of light. Our national crisis is real and highly visible to all of us. You are the only one seeing the shadow because you yourself are blocking the light by not being truthful with the American people. Then you said that our greatest national challenge was global warming. I know you meant to say the threat of Islamic terrorism.. Sometimes dreams can be really silly,

The Class of 61 We started out early that morning in ’49; Twas our first day of school, we were feeling so fine. Leaving parents and siblings for an adventure so new; Who could have guessed where it would lead us in 2002? Country schools now long gone, names like Detherage and Bolles At High Prairie and Bacon, we answered the rolls. Phillipsburg and Washington, we walked down gravel lanes There was Dry and Dusty, what was it called when it rained? Some started out at Adams, Oh, the memories we share; Gathered in lines up the staircase, for our day to prepare. Harry Truman was President, most cars were still black; TVs? – we didn’t have them, didn’t know there was a lack Of things we would soon find we couldn’t live without; Life was simpler and slower, of this there’s no doubt. First strangers, then best friends, we soon made our way To our groups and our cliques, though some changed day by day. There were teachers we loved, and I fear some we hated; Others were thought

By   CHRISTOPHER DE VINCK Jan. 7, 2015 6:55 p.m. ET 39 COMMENTS The new year is my 63rd, and with age I have come to understand that no matter how hard I try to hold on to the past, the images fade and will, eventually, disappear. When I was a boy my Belgian grandmother visited our home in Allendale, N.J., nearly every summer. She brought Belgian chocolates, her felt hat and thick-heeled shoes. We played cards, sang French songs and sat in the yard together. She came to my college graduation and later pushed my son in a carriage. Thirty years ago my parents and I helped her into a wheelchair and kissed her goodbye at Newark airport. The thoughtful airline worker who took hold of the chair kindly turned it around and pulled my grandmother backward toward two wide doors. The doors opened automatically. My grandmother sat in the wheelchair with her felt hat and she waved goodbye. I never saw her again. Her worn heart gave out and she died that winter. When my daughter Kare

Computers that started up on their own in the wee hours of the morning.  The sounds of microprocessors interrupting your sleep from a laptop which was shut down earlier in the evening.  A home phone that connects somewhere else when you call it from work but no one is there.  The trouble light on your alarm system  that chirps in the middle of the night but there’s no identifiable cause.  A television set that mysteriously begins to mute and the frames freeze and when your provider technician does trouble-shooting on it, he finds nothing wrong. These are only a few of the red flags that began to alert former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson back in 2011 that someone was watching her. This is an ongoing investigation with Attkisson even as I write today. She sued the Department of Justice this week on allegations that the Obama Administration through the DOJ had hacked into her computers when she was reporting on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and Obamacare. The complete story a

My column from today's Lebanon Daily Record: Medical Kidnappings on the Increase Arianna and Dominick, 9 month old twins, should have been enjoying all the sights and sounds of their first Christmas at home with their parents, Cassaundra and Warnell, but they were not allowed to do so. Five months ago, the Child Protective Services of Illinois removed them from the family home and put them in foster care. They are now in their fourth foster home in five months, and although the parents are supposed to be able to see them for a weekly two-hour visit, that visit was cancelled because the foster parents had taken them out of state for Christmas. Eight year old Jaxon Adams was removed from his parents’ custody by CPS working with Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City upon the insistence of a nurse practitioner working with Beacon Clinic at Children’s Mercy. That nurse told him if she had her way, he would “never see his mother or father again”. Four month old Kathryn Hughes