reflections

The Witness, a compelling romance mystery, by Sandra Brown is bound to get you hooked from the start with its villains that are such greasy, sick individuals that you actually rout for them to die and a down-to-earth protagonist that will do anything to protect those that she loves.
The protagonist is idealistic public defender [...]

Blowback, according to author Chalmers Johnson, is a term invented by the CIA to “describe the likelihood that our covert operations in other people’s countries could result in retaliation against Americans, civilian and military, at home and abroad.” At another point, he notes that “blowback is another way of saying that a nation sows what [...]

The U.S. Senate Historical Office lists Senator Barack Hussein Obama, of Illinois, is the fifth African American Senator in U.S. History and, if elected to the presidency in November 2007, will be the first African American president as well as one of the youngest presidents to gain this office. Obama was born in August 1961, [...]

Freakonomics: takes a subject like economics which is often believed to be just about numbers and transforms it into a variable used to explain a horde of socio-economic issues. In the book rogue economist Steve Levitt and NY Times writer Steve Dubner, attempt to explain why crime has decreased even though the population has increased; [...]

Lisa Gardner’s thriller The Third Victim incorporates a cast of well-developed and intriguing characters as it deftly probes the hot social issue of school shootings. The central protagonist is Bakersville, Oregon, deputy sheriff, Lorraine (Rainie) Conner, who finds herself in the position of primary investigator when the sheriff’s son, Danny (age 13) confesses to the [...]

Probably the best ancient example of standard alien abduction is the story of “Jacob’s ladder” found in Genesis 28 which reads:
“And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the [...]

On May 17, 2007, an agreement reached between Democrats and Republicans regarding immigration reform has changed nothing about the underlying politics behind immigration reform and is likely to meet a similar fate as the bill proposed last year. In fact, this time around some of the biggest players have less incentive to cut tough deals [...]

George Tenet, former CIA chief, in his remarkable memoir, At the Center of the Storm, provides literally damning evidence about 9/11 and the Iraq War beginning with his description of a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, two months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This meeting was called because of intelligence that Tenet [...]

Flower Children, based on Ms. Swann’s upbringing incorporates vignettes about four sibling, the children of back-to-the-land hippies (flower children), raised in Pennsylvania farm country, who find themselves impossibly at odds with their surroundings. The children find themselves both delighted and unnerved by a life without limits that allows them to run free all day, dance [...]

Zarhar Khan of the Associated Press reported from Karachi, Pakistan, that a political crisis is threatening President General Pervez Musharraf’s position and it appears as if increasingly violent clashes are positioning the country for a possible coup attempt. According to Khan, violence exploded last Saturday, May 12, 2007, when clashes between pro-government gunmen and opposition [...]