A key provision of the law governing foreign-intelligence collection is up for reauthorization, and the stakes are high. In fact, there are people serving in our Government today for whom there could be real legal consequences for the next General Election. Here is the gist: “Section 702 extensively protects the privacy of Americans who are […]

OK- we saw the Toronado shown above the other day and it has drifted through our imagination ever since.That is what two-door automobiles used to look like. That blue beast demonstrated a front wheel drive and an aggressive smile on the chrome grill. That was how some of us got around in 1967. this is […]

We are going to run the weekly meteorologic update a little out of the normal sequence this morning. You may have felt the same way when you saw the headlines this morning. We had not quite got over the news of the passing of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. The announcement about her husband Jimmy […]

(We thought we would start with the Footnotes section of the Socotra Daily and get that out of the way. You are aware of how complicated this gets and how quickly when we deal with other people’s religious faiths and try to stay away from the details we do not understand. When world history came […]

08 June 1979 Editor’s Note: The nature of the world is in change. This item first appeared in the Socotra Daily in the summer of 1979 in a place called “Kenya.” What will the powers do next on the world stage? A doctor’s appointment looms here in the Piedmont. Why I accepted a commitment to […]

You may have seen that there was a football game scheduled yesterday. Well, more accurately there were several of them. You saw some of the early anxiety in the column last week after successfully ignoring the impact of new rules and conference allegiance. We do not claim to understand it, so this season has had […]

We have finally arrived at a real, no-kidding national holiday! Yesterday had its moments, of course. On November 22nd, we celebrated: “Go for a Ride Day!” “Love Your Freckles Day!” “National Cranberry Relish Day!” We know what we are doing today, of course, since this is one of Those No-Kidding Nationals, the one instituted by […]

It is finally here, like actually today! In our old military parlance, we would term it “Bravo Foxtrot.” We will use that instead of the public term for today, since it has been used already. “Black Friday” seems to have been going on for weeks! You may have experienced the disorientation, since today launches the […]

1944-1945 This is a trial run for some of the sketches Dear Old Dad did while awaiting further transport at the end of the Really Big War, the Second one of them. You will note W. E. continued his fledgling self-training as an artist and tried to capture some of the people and events of […]

9,604 cancelled is one of the phrases being worked on this morning by senior officials. That is, Gentle Reader, scheduled jet flights by major carriers for which the Department of Transportation Security is responsible. Not the production of the jets themselves, that being a different sort of thing, mind you. Many of our citizens are […]