It’s like a board game, the monarchy. Since we don’t pay for it, we can watch the game with amusement. I’m astonished, though, that it’s still going. Something to believe in, I suppose, for Brits, who live in hell these days under the Tories and no longer have the E.U…

I’m shocked. What a world we’re leaving to our kids. If a woman gets pregnant — or, in Ohio, a 10-year-old child gets raped — she’s told, in the bad states, that she’s a slave who has to carry the fetus to term whether she wants to or not. Where…

“Any state that forces a pregnant woman to have a child before viability is a slaveholding state engaging in sexual violence.” I read this today: “A pregnant woman in Texas told police that her unborn child counted as an additional passenger after being cited for driving alone in a high-occupancy (HOV) lane, offering up a potentially clever defense for a motorist navigating the legal landscape following the supreme court’s striking down…

Your body, your choice. Forcing an unwilling woman to continue a pregnancy before viability is not pro-life. It’s slavery. If you want to have a child, give birth. Your business. Nobody else’s. If you decide it’s best to abort, seldom an easy choice, have the abortion. Your business. Nobody else’s. …

The Bible — any bible — is like a ouija board or the I Ching or a roll of the dice. You can justify anything with a quote from the bible. I’m a fan of the Black writer John Edgar Wideman, now 80. I first met him in the late…

(a short story from Clouds Are the Mountains of the World) “Did you vote?” the mysterious Ava said. She had a bright orange sticker stuck to the sweater over her left nipple. I VOTED, it said. …

As most of you know by now, a mentally ill young man, reportedly a convert to fundamentalist Shia extremism, attacked the well-known author Salman Rushdie on August 12, 2022, as he was about to lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in New York state, stabbing him a dozen times or more…

A majority of Americans identify as Christian; 30% have no religious affiliation. Christians and atheists, along with everybody else, are equal in the eyes of the law. The United States is NOT a Christian nation; we have no state religion. That’s a good thing. When unelected politicians on the Supreme…