If You Ask Me

History tells us that two of the first 10 constitutional amendments, the Bill of Rights, were written to promote a money-saving militia in place of what the leaders of the new nation considered an expensive and potentially dangerous standing army.

History tells us this but most of us don’t pay attention.

Connecticut Republicans think they have their best chance ever to defeat perennial winner Richard Blumenthal, who’s running for his third term in the U.S. Senate, following five terms as Connecticut’s attorney general.

But, with a little help from their right wing, they’re doing  all they can to keep it from happening.

In the summer of 1961, I wrote, “For a few days in October, Connecticut women will be able to receive birth control advice and devices in New Haven, where the Planned Parenthood League will open the state’s first birth control center in more than 20 years.” The league planned to test an ancient Connecticut birth control law that prohibited the u

Being an “elder statesman” used to be something of a distinction but in today’s political world, there doesn’t seem to be any other kind. Though there are more elders than statesmen.

Three weeks before the 1980 presidential election, Republican Ronald Reagan promised to make history by appointing the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

When I wrote a column for my college paper back when talking pictures were relatively new, I went to a movie on campus where members of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity had instructed their pledges to make their presence known by setting off alarm clocks during the film.

I was a six-year-old first grader when the Robert Fulton Elementary School in North Bergen, New Jersey, held its first air raid drill in late 1939 or maybe early 1940.

Our two, not-so-great political parties are stumbling and fumbling their way to the the 2022 and 2024 congressional and presidential elections because of the antics — to use a kind word — of their respective extremist wings.