Growing up, Christmas was a special time. I have five brothers. We each got one large gift from Santa and a couple of smaller gifts from our parents. One of those gifts was always socks or underwear. Because we had eight people in our family the number of gifts around the Christmas tree was ...

Every Christmas season, American families watch the official lighting of the White House tree on national television. However, a few times along the way, this great American tradition almost became extinct. Our 14th President, Franklin Pierce, was the first chief executive to display a ...

Lame-duck sessions of Congress are often regarded with an indifference befitting an afterthought, the tidying up of mostly minor matters. The current session, however, could begin rehabilitating the government’s reputation by, with a single bipartisan stroke, righting two glaring wrongs that ...

Leaving aside any possible undeclared motives for leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an independent, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has said some things that have needed to be said for a long time.  In an op-ed for The Arizona Republic, Sinema wrote, “Americans are told that we have ...

I’ll start with a point made by writer Sam Thielman in an opinion piece for NBC News online two years ago. The country was up in arms about the film “Cuties” being broadcast on Netflix. The movie featured 11- and 12-year-old French girls in a dance competition; their performances included ...

Christmas is only a week away. Are you struggling with last minute gift ideas? We just got back from our trip to Kiawah Island. My daughter, Dannielle and I ran the half-marathon. When we run the same race we normally run together. She slows down to pace me and we get to talk. It’s amazing ...