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What is ‘good’ about Good Friday

Christians describe the day an innocent man was violently executed as "Good." Unless you know the whole story, it doesn't make much sense. This is Holy Week on the Christian calendar. It began with Palm Sunday, which commemorates the Triumphal Entry. As Jesus rode a young donkey into Jerusalem, the people shouted, "Hosanna!" and "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" The symbolism may not be obvious now, but it was then. Hundreds of years before, Zechariah had prophesied that Israel's king would come "riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." This was just ...

Lessons from the Vietnam War for Iran

We Americans are an impatient lot. If we must engage in warfare, we would prefer it be wrapped up in weeks, not months, and certainly not years like World War II, Korea and Vietnam. In those wars we had the draft, so more Americans were engaged in fighting and watching their progress, or lack ...

Let’s kill cancer

There are few things in life more terrifying than a cancer diagnosis, as any victim of this horrible disease will tell you. So let's kill cancer before it kills us. This crusade could be similar in size and scope to our national commitments to developing a polio vaccine in the 1950s and the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020-21, both of which saved millions of lives. We know this is not an impossible dream. Over the past four decades, we've made stunning progress in cutting death rates of many forms of cancer in half. But there is still a long way to go, especially in eliminating death from ...

Honor the plumbers

There are many things in American life that deserve our suspicion and contempt, but plumbers aren't among them. Evidently, Jimmy Kimmel disagrees. The late-night host took a shot at newly confirmed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who used to run a plumbing business, by saying, "We have a plumber now protecting us from terrorism." The gibe was a setup for a line about Super Mario -- the Italian plumber starring in the Nintendo game -- but the premise was that there was something inherently ridiculous about a plumber ascending to a position of major responsibility in Washington, D.C. ...

Free speech isn’t just for laughs

Following reports that Bill Maher will receive the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to believe it. "This is fake news," she told CNN. "Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award." Ah, guess again. On Thursday, the center confirmed that Maher was the pick. (This reversal was first reported by Politico.) The annual award, presented by the Kennedy Center, will be given on June 28, right before the performing arts center closes for a two-year renovation. In the spirit of the honor, Maher thanked "the Mark Twain people," ...

How will congress choose to handle the Iran Bill?

Whatever you think of the war in Iran, there's a separate question -- independent of the military merits -- that Congress must answer: How will it be paid for? The Pentagon has requested $200 billion to fund the campaign. While circumstances could change the price tag, interest payments on ...