While dining with friends the other evening, the sibling squabbles we had as children came up as a topic of conversation. Laughingly, one friend recounted how her father, tired of hearing the bickering between herself and another sibling, calmly suggested they go outside, get some boxing gloves, and settle the argument that way. “But she
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READ MOREAmy Fabbrini and Eric Ziegler of Redmond, Oregon, did something this Christmas that many parents take for granted: they celebrated it with their child. The couple’s 10-month-old son Hunter had been in foster care almost since the day he was born. But last week, The Oregonian reports, a judge declared that the state had not
READ MOREThe U.S. government pays employees a total of about $1 million per minute, according to a watchdog group’s report on the sprawling federal bureaucracy. Looking at 78 large agencies, the nonprofit organization OpenTheBooks.com found that the average salary of a federal employee exceeds $100,000 and that roughly 1 in 5 of those on the government
READ MOREIn 1964, shortly after the release of Disney’s adaptation of P. L. Travers’ charming 1934 book Mary Poppins, J.R.R. Tolkien sent a letter to one Miss J.L. Curry of Stanford University. In the letter, Tolkien complained about the corrupting influence Walt Disney’s movies had on literary works. “Though in most of the ‘pictures’ proceeding from his
READ MOREFor the last 20 years or so, there has been one regular item on my Christmas list. That item is the annual anthology of old-fashioned Christmas stories entitled Christmas in My Heart. The series has been running for over a quarter of a century now, and even if I don’t ask for the latest edition,
READ MOREJohn Adams said of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) that “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.” Anthony Everitt called him an “architect of constitutions that still govern our lives.” Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration of Independence was based on “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle,
READ MOREEvery Christmas, we get a spate of articles from major newspapers and magazines with titles such as “Who was the real Jesus?” or “Who was the Historical Jesus,” or, “The Virgin Birth of Jesus: Fact or Fable?” Surely they have run out of novel titles by now. This year’s entry was from the Washington Post:
READ MOREMcCallister family, take note: Any parents who leave their children age 13 or younger home alone may be guilty of neglect under Illinois state law. That’s because Illinois law states that “any minor under the age of 14 years whose parent or other person responsible for the minor’s welfare leaves the minor without supervision for an unreasonable
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