04 September 2026
A Mother's Infanticide
The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy has stumped its jury. First degree murder is an impossible verdict— no woman who has gone through the ecstasy and agony of conceiving, bearing, and nurturing her own three children can have brutally killed them in her right mind. How lucky are I and my wife not to have experienced such a tragic consequence of our humanity.
We must realize that only hubris can justify concluding that mankind’s code of ethics is hardwired into our physiological psychologies. Unfortunately for Ms. Clancy, her children and their father, a biological aberration is the only reasonable cause to which any of us should attribute such a horrendous violation of self-imposed human values.
Even the God who instilled in us those rules of behavior only exists in human consciousness as a result of our belief in Him. Denying Ms. Clancy’s vulnerability, and that of all of us, to ultimate biological weaknesses is another form of hubris. While we can seek to pretend that humanity lives according to its own sacred rules, we cannot ignore that in the end evolution has built this edifice called human nature from available materialsof which we may never know the origin.
Maternal infanticide proves how inescapable is the mystery of human life. Terminating any lives for having violated our rules of behavior is typically a judgment call based on its likelihood of preventing similar future crimes. However much we rely on human nature to prevent repetition of a mother’s infanticide, society still must prevent Ms. Clancy from ever again similarly violating its rules. That doesn’t mean execution, but it requires everlasting detention.
# posted by frank : 7:43 PM
19 August 2026
Why Congress Won’t Fight Trump’s Tariffs
Careerist Congressmen are happy when the President comes up with a way to raise revenue without having to increase income taxes. Trump’s tariff scheme makes American consumers pay higher prices for imports by adding higher duties to the cost of buying foreign goods. Those consumption taxes are politically more palatable to wealthy funders of both Trump’s construction projects and legislators’ reelection campaigns.
In her 7/23/2026 NYTimes Guest Essay, Ms. Natasha Sarin is vain to “hope that Congress will eventually push back” against Trump’s audacious subterfuge. He wants to give politicians a way to spend more on government contracts without having equitably to charge those contractors for the privilege. (Funny how Trump is much more concerned with the opinions of people who work for a living when he doesn’t want to lose their votes than when he hires them to complete one of his vanity projects!)
Consequently, the U.S. national debt will far exceed 40 trillion dollars before Trump’s second term of office ends, and everyone in his Republican Party is happy to let their constituents bear that burden as the price of being told what they want to hear. Well, TANSTAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch).
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Sometime, that obligation will come. The mortgage on the country’s future will long outlive Trump’s White House ballroom, his Oval Office golden tckotskeys, his Triumphal Arch, and other vanity projects. Hopefully, the preference of our democratic majority for short-term revenge on the supposedly unfair 250-year record of the Republic won’t last as long. The Congress should then be controlled by far-sighted leaders who anticipate another 250.
# posted by frank : 12:33 AM
15 August 2026
Transgender Bathroom Use
Back in the early 1970s, I shared an apartment with several male and female schoolmates who decorated one of our bathrooms with an anomalous poster. It depicted a woman with her dress hitched up standing alongside several men before a row of urinals.
That contemporary curiosity would be less startling these days. The transgender urinator would presumably be expected, when necessary, to occupy a stall or use a commode in the women’s or bisexual bathroom now. Nevertheless, it illustrates that transgenderism is really a cultural choice rather than a biological event, no matter how much corrective surgery is undertaken.
The point is that a politician's acceptance of a person's differences from standard norms is not at all corrupt. It may reflect other factors about which they are transparent, like family, occupation, sexual orientation, inability physically to come to a polling place on Election Day, etc. Blanket official derision of specific uncommon circumstances is not only "unwoke"; it actually perversely obstructs human invention of reasonable accommodation.
# posted by frank : 10:46 AM
13 August 2026
Why Congress Won’t Fight Trump’s Tariffs
Careerist Congressmen are happy when the President comes up with a way to raise revenue without having to increase income taxes. Trump’s tariff scheme makes American consumers pay higher prices for imports by adding duties to the cost of engaging in global trade. Those consumption taxes are politically more palatable to wealthy funders of both Trump’s dishonest schemes and of legislators’ reelection campaigns.
In her opinion piece in the 8/13/2026 NY Times, Natasha Sarin is vain to “hope that Congress will eventually push back” against Trump’s audacious subterfuge. He wants to give politicians a way to spend more on government contracts without having proportionately to assess those contractors for the privilege.
# posted by frank : 5:25 PM
05 August 2026
Real Cause of Fauci Hearing Travesty
It was obvious from the beginning that Senator Rand Paul’s objective in using his investigative committee to grill the former head of the NIH NIAID agency about his role in combating the COVID 19 Pandemic was only to raise his own political profile. How could he have forgotten or ignored the ultimate condemnation that the late Senator Joseph McCarthy brought on himself by conducting a similar witch-hunt of alleged communist sympathizers in the U.S. Government 75 years ago.
Was he be motivated by political ambition, resentment of unassuming intellect, or contempt for the public’s ability to think critically? Is this what democratic government is supposed to do—provide a platform for demagogues to appeal to the public’s need for entertainment?
In fact, the American public has been conditioned by commercial media continually to seek distractions from serious and more demanding aspects of life. Politicians now must compete with business and social media for their voters’ attention. Not only does that allow public office-seekers cheapen the minimum value of issues they address, it also tempts them to exaggerate, distort, or falsify some of their claims.
A liberal democratic form of government cannot honestly operate according to the same evaluative parameters as free market economics. Not every decision depends on the bottom line. When it comes to saving lives from a health crisis, the cost of carefully avoiding compounding errors of judgment is often immaterial in looking for an effective solution. That consideration may not be foremost in the minds of politicians focused primarily on their next election.
# posted by frank : 9:44 PM
31 July 2026
Proposed Head Start Defunding
The reduced budget for the Head Start program, proposed by the Trump administration, is only a gratuitous change that merely reduces its supposed burden on wealthier taxpayers. Sure, a briefer babysitting service would be cheaper than Head Start; but at the cost or shirking its original goal under the Great Society objectives of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
It reflects the failure of those wealthy, like Trump, who have benefited by lucky birth to meet their obligation to help others, who don't have access to great wealth, take advantage of opportunity. Trump does not recognize that those with great wealth must perform, and not resent, their essential role in leveling the playing field.
# posted by frank : 7:19 PM
25 July 2026
Trump as Mentalist
President Trump attended the 7/24/2026 White House Corresponsents Association dinner. After giving a nonsense address, he witnessed a performance by an amazing mentalist, Oz Pearlman, who was able to convince the audience, which included AG Todd Blanche, of his skill to guess or even influence their thoughts.
It became obvious that Trump really enjoyed the show. He should have recognized the performer’s talent as akin to his own presumed ability to convince his political supporters of anything he wants them to believe that would help him achieve his goal of self-enrichment. How ironically successful was the WHCA to have featured Mr. Pearlman in their program.
# posted by frank : 9:08 AM
