Carrier is a “shining city upon the sea”

FEB. 3, 2012 — You can feel America’s promise and power aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It’s where foreign policy meets reality.

A carrier is “100,000 tons of diplomacy that doesn’t need a permission slip,” one officer explained over a weekend tour in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast. “We’ll go where we want and stay as long as we need.”

Weekend visit to aircraft carrier is just awesome

JAN. 30, 2012 — Imagine you are sitting facing the back of a plane and someone is pressing an eight-pack of toilet paper onto your chest. Then BAM — for about two seconds, they punch it really, really hard and keep up the pressure.]

That’s what it feels like to land on an aircraft carrier. It takes your breath away. From the moment the tailhook on the C-2 Greyhound cargo plane latched onto the arresting wire on Saturday aboard the USS Enterprise, passengers decelerated from 105 m.p.h. to zero in just two seconds.

The dream that still inspires a nation

Today when you hear mention of the name “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” it will be easy to recall the sound, captured on black and white film, of his powerful, mellifluous voice in August 1963 urging freedom to ring on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. His “I Have a Dream” speech cemented his place as one of the greatest orators of all time.

Be thankful for government

NOV. 25, 2011 – In this season of being thankful, let’s be thankful for our government at local, state and federal levels.

Even though Congress has a 9 percent approval rating and our state legislators often suffer from a need for real leadership, government has helped enormously to make America what it is.

Tea party zealots are ruining the American dream

AUG. 12, 2011 — The vitriol being spewed by the underinformed acolytes of the tea party is troubling for America’s free future.

You see, these folks are mad (in more ways than one). And they’ll tell anybody they know that they’re mad. At what? It doesn’t really seem to matter. They’re just enraged.

By channeling the tea parties of the Revolution, they shroud their rage and equate it with what was happening in our united states back in the 1770s. The problem is that the two times – then and now – are far from the same.