Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Brain Salad Surgery (1973). Guaranteed to blow your head apart.

The old Republican Party is dead, and the reasons are clear. The party’s continued efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, to support a president who is without ethics and to support accused sexual predator Roy Moore of Alabama all show the party to be without ethics or values (Christian or other).

Republicans have proposed $1.5 trillion tax bills in the House and Senate, which could eliminate deductions for personal and real estate taxes, state and local income taxes, medical expenses and personal casualty losses (too bad, disaster victims) and could penalize graduate students.

People who believe tax reform is for the low and middle classes are deluding themselves. These bills reduce corporate taxes by huge percentages without any requirement of small businesses or corporations to hire additional U.S. workers, raise pay rates or bring back manufacturing to the U.S.

These bills are written for the wealthy, including President Donald Trump and his cronies, by eliminating the alternative minimum tax, estate taxes, etc. The bottom line is that the Republican Party has been bought and sold.

Jennifer Randle

Overland Park

Things are going really well for our economy, a subject the Fake News spends as little time as possible discussing! Stock Market hit another RECORD HIGH, unemployment is now at a 17 year low and companies are coming back into the USA. Really good news, and much more to come!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2017

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What is it with journalists? They think they have a right to destroy people with impunity. Donald Trump thinks otherwise. Journalists are the lowest of the low.

Look where the Giro d'Italia is starting next year. Flirting with disaster? (Click to enlarge.)

Switch (1975). This album came out in the month in which I turned 18, when I was about to finish high school. I have loved it dearly ever since.

Here.

Here.

I'd like to put in a plug for a book, which I finished reading today. It's Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen, The Constitution: An Introduction (New York: Basic Books, 2015). Despite my background in political science, history, law, and philosophy, and despite having written a Ph.D. dissertation on constitutional interpretation, I learned a great deal while reading this book. Not the least of its virtues is that it's beautifully written. I would recommend it to any high-school or college student. If you're a parent or grandparent, you might consider a joint reading with your child or grandchild, pausing after each chapter to discuss what you've read. It's appalling how ignorant young people are of their founding documents. This book is the remedy.

This essay by philosopher Nicholas Rescher is worth a few minutes of your time. I've made some of the same points myself over the years, in this blog and elsewhere.