Straight From The Hart

Here is my column from LDR today. If you have been watching Fox News this afternoon you will have to admit I am really timely today. THE MINNESOTA CONNECTION Federal officials arrested six men over the weekend and charged them with conspiring to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization. Four of the young men, ranging in age from 19 to 21 were arrested in Minneapolis and two more were detained in San Diego where they had driven to buy fake passports. They had hoped to cross into Mexico and continue to Syria from there. These men were among several dozen Americans who have traveled or tried to travel to Syria to join ISIS in recent months. The Americans arrested so far have been a diverse group, with ages ranging from early teens to late forties, including many women, and have either been converts to Islam or children from Muslim immigrant families. About 100 Americans are being tracked by the FBI because of their travels to Syria. Lauri B Regan, writing in the...

Here are some recent news stories you might have missed among all the larger controversies in the news. Last week a small group of students calling themselves the Associated Students of University of California, Irvine, passed a Resolution banning national flags from display on the campus because the flags “serve as symbols of patriotism or weapons for nationalism.” They went on to say the flags “also construct cultural mythologies and narratives that in turn charge nationalistic sentiments” whatever that means. Other ridiculous statements made by those opposed to flying our flag included statements that the American flag has been flown in times of “colonialism and imperialism” and could symbolize American “exceptionalism and superiority”. Well, I should hope so. Our flag was flown by our colonies after winning a war against the imperialism of England. And as for symbolizing American exceptionalism and superiority, that’s exactly why we fly it. We are an exceptional country ...

Here is my column as it appeared in today"s LDR: In his eulogy for Missouri State Auditor Thomas Schweich on March 3, Senator John Danforth looked out over the large crowd attending the funeral service, which included many politicians, and stated bluntly, “Politics as it now exists must end. We are fed up.” Earlier in the eulogy, Danforth, who had been Schweich’s mentor, blamed the auditors’ death on ”a low point in politics that have gone so hideously wrong”. He was referring to the rumors and innuendos that had been swirling around the halls of the State Capitol Building in Jefferson City for weeks that Schweich was a Jew and therefore could not win a gubernatorial election. Schweich had become very disturbed about what he called a “whispering campaign” to that effect, including an anonymous third-party TV commercial that mocked the Auditor, who had recently announced his candidacy for the office of Governor of Missouri. Schweich died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot ...

We were having some problems with our television earlier this week. When I turned it on, I could detect a faint odor. After checking the obvious - wiring, electrical plug-ins, and so on, I conducted a more in-depth investigation because the odor was getting stronger and more offensive every time I turned it on. Then I noticed something really interesting. I was only smelling it when the news came on and it dawned on me that the odor became more obnoxious when Hillary Clinton appeared on my screen. Kind of a fishy smell, you know? So I guess you know by now where I”m coming from. Have you all been keeping up with this story? It’s only the latest in a series of Clinton scandals over the past thirty years, but this one is really big. And no, I’m not talking about the painting of Bill Clinton hanging in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington and depicting a shadow of Monica Lewinsky’s famous blue dress on the mantel against which Bill is leaning. But t...

Lois Lerner’s long-lost emails turned up this week, about 32,000 of them. The committee investigating her involvement in the IRS scandal had made numerous requests for them and the IRS director had testified under oath that they were irretrievably lost, and could never be found. Even the hard drive had been destroyed. And her Blackberry phone which she used to conduct business was also broken. Strange. But not nearly as strange as how this story began in the first place. It was the closing session of the annual meeting of the American Bar Association’s tax section on May 14, 2013. The meeting room at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C. was filled with lawyers. Lois Lerner, Director of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, had just finished her prepared remarks when she was asked a question from the floor. The questioner was Celia Roady, one of the tax lawyers in attendance. Her question surprised everyone there. She said she had heard there were some concerns ...

My column this weekend. "More Questions Than Opinions" I usually use this column to express my opinions. This week I have nothing but questions. Why isn’t there more of an outcry and an outspoken sense of anger about what is happening to America? Many of us are outraged but why don’t our neighbors and family members sense the urgency or see the danger approaching? During my years as a pastor, I often used the story of the Titanic as an illustration in sermons and I read every book I could find about that tragedy - a tragedy that should never have happened. Why did the passengers and crew ignore the many warnings on that fateful night of April 15, 1912? Why were the people so complacent in believing that the captain and crew were doing their job and watching out for them? Why were they neglectful about having lifeboats at the ready and crew members trained to use them? Sometimes I feel like I’m standing on the deck of the American Titanic and that we are quickly go...

Have you seen the insurance commercial on television where the actor says “Did you know that words can really hurt you?” Then a western “loner” rides off into the sunset leaving his lady at the ranch when suddenly the words “The End” appear on the screen and the “loner” rides into the words which apparently knock him off his horse to the ground. Silly, right? But not nearly as silly as some of the words, phrases and statements we hear uttered on the television screen every day by supposedly sophisticated and educated people. I have collected politicians’ words and phrases for years now. Marie Harf, spokeswoman for the State Department, who is always good for a few laughs, outdid herself this week. When asked how many ISIS terrorists we were killing, she admitted we were killing some but went on to say we can’t “kill ourselves out of this war”. Her solution was to provide jobs for them. She said any 17 year old ISIS warrior would probably be much more interested in st...