Goodbye, George Bush

By Paul Hollrah | 01/22/09

"Few presidents have entered the Oval Office with as much opportunity for positive change as did George Bush.  Certainly, no previous president ever ascended to the presidency with the future of the country so critically in the balance.  Yet, Bush left the White House having failed to lead the country, having failed to grasp the opportunities that lay before him..."As leader of his party... Bush had an obligation to bring into the... read more »

The Supreme Court's Hottest Potato

By Paul Hollrah | 01/20/09

Recent polls tell us that from 55-60 percent of the American people now believe that the question of Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as President of the United States has at least some merit.  To review the bidding, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed in federal courts alleging that Obama cannot serve as president by reason of the fact that he is not a "natural born" U.S. citizen, as required by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S.... read more »

Rich White Trash

By Paul Hollrah | 01/16/09

At approximately 12:30 PM on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, the first members of Barack Hussein Obama's official staff will walk up the sidewalk from the parking area between the White House and the Old Executive Office Building and enter the north entrance of the west wing.   They will find the offices neat and clean, the desks and file cabinets all empty, the supply cabinets well stocked, the floors and carpets freshly cleaned, and... read more »

Amazing Grace - The American Sequel

By Paul Hollrah | 01/14/09

One of the finest film productions in recent years has been the British film, Amazing Grace, the story of how William Wilberforce, a young idealist in the British Parliament during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, waged a decades-long struggle to bring an end to the slave trade in the British Empire. I can well remember the end of the movie.  As the screen went dark and the credits began to roll, no one moved... everyone... read more »

Electoral Reform - The Multiple Vote

By Paul Hollrah | 01/13/09

In a recent column I discussed the very real threat to the continued existence of our republic that is posed by uninformed, misinformed, and indifferent voters.  The column drew a significant amount of comment... most of it positive.The most interesting response came from a reader who pointed to a 1953 novel titled, In the Wet, by British novelist Nevil Shute.  Although the basic plot is an interesting and engaging one... involving the... read more »

The Electoral College Has Failed

By Paul Hollrah | 01/10/09

As the Founding Fathers debated in the Assembly Room of Independence Hall in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787, they struggled with the questions of how to design a lasting republic for the people of the newly independent colonies.   In an age long before radio and television, and years before the electric telegraph, when the three-century-old Gutenberg press was still the state of the art in printing; the Founding Fathers were... read more »

Real Electoral Reform

By Paul Hollrah | 01/08/09

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government."  On another occasion he spoke even more clearly; he said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."  The election of Barack Obama on November 4 illustrates precisely what Jefferson had in mind.  In a November 13-15 Zogby poll of 512 Obama voters... 97.1% high school... read more »

Something is Rotten... in the U.S. Senate

By Paul Hollrah | 01/04/09

What is perhaps the most remarkable event in the history of the U.S. Senate occurred on May 21, 1856.  As Sen. Charles Sumner (R-MA) denounced an attack by 800 pro-slavery Democrats on the small abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, he was suddenly and viciously attacked from behind by Preston Brooks, a South Carolina Democrat.  Brooks struck Sumner over the head repeatedly with a cane... knocking him unconscious... and when his... read more »

Obama's "Butt Boys"

By Paul Hollrah | 12/29/08

On Tuesday, December 23, Barack Obama's newly-named White House Counsel, Greg Craig, announced the results of Obama's internal self-examination of contacts between members of his staff and the office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.  The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not anyone on his staff has engaged in any inappropriate conversations with the governor or his chief of staff relative to the auctioning of Obama's... read more »

Off With Their Heads

By Paul Hollrah | 12/20/08

My younger sister has often complained to me that, during their working careers, she and her husband had difficulty making ends meet, financially.  In response, I've tried to convince her that those who have a little money... or even a lot of money... have a far more difficult problem: i.e., holding onto what they have.No man has done more to prove my point than Bernard Madoff, the head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC, a... read more »