Makaela Zabael-Gravatt was shot and nearly killed in her own backyard in Meridian, Idaho last September. The man arrested in that attack, Christopher Wirfs, had a violent criminal history. Prior to the attempted murder, Wirfs had spent several weeks stalking and harassing his victim, on multiple occasions explicitly threatening to shoot her. Zabael-Gravatt twice requested and was denied, an order of protection against the man who eventually tried to kill her. Media inquiries about those denials were deflected by the Meridian Police Department to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, which simply refused to comment on the matter. At the time, the … Continue reading →

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Forty-eight years ago (in 1968), the country was in the midst of another presidential campaign that came at a seminal moment in American history. Five years earlier, John F. Kennedy had been murdered, and Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April of 1968. The Vietnam War was escalating. Race riots were becoming a fact of urban life. Racial and generational politics as well as social issues were threatening to tear the country apart. Then on the night of June 5th, 1968, after John Kennedy’s brother Robert had won the all-important California Primary, America got yet another jolt: the … Continue reading →

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The war on cash heated up this week when a former Obama economic adviser/ex-Treasury secretary floated the idea of eliminating the $100 bill. Lawrence Summers called for death to the Benjamins in a post on his Washington Post blog titled It’s Time to Kill the $100 Bill. The post announced the release of a paper by Harvard’s Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government senior Fellow Peter Sands arguing that governments should stop issuing high-denomination currency such as 500 euro notes and $100 bills. The paper even proposed withdrawing such currency them from circulation. Cash warriors always publicly center their … Continue reading →

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I was surprised by how grimy and sooty Budapest was. So many of its buildings, once gorgeous, were in an advanced state of decay. This city looked better before World War II, for sure, and certainly a century ago. Since escaping Communism, Budapest is regaining its glories, though not at the same pace as Prague. There’s a peculiar local fad called ruin pubs, where hip types can drink and dance in these half-wrecked buildings. Too creaky to boogie, I only glimpsed them from the outside, but they didn’t look half bad. In the subway concourses, there were many homeless, and … Continue reading →

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Many people of mature years are amazed at how many young people have voted for Senator Bernie Sanders, and are enthusiastic about the socialism he preaches. Many of those older people have lived long enough to have seen socialism fail, time and again, in countries around the world. Venezuela, with all its rich oil resources, is currently on the verge of economic collapse, after its heady fling with socialism. But, most of the young have missed all that, and their dumbed-down education is far more likely to present the inspiring rhetoric of socialism than to present its dismal track record. … Continue reading →

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I’ve been traveling with Monica and another friend for several weeks on a gambling trip in Europe. Monica escaped communist Poland via a work visa to Sweden. She’s fluent in English but won’t talk to me. She tells me it’s because I don’t drink. In Communist Poland, booze is the first line of defense against the Secret Police. “If they drink on duty, they might slip and reveal their ‘secret identity’,” Monica tells me. We have a drink and everything’s cool. It isn’t just in the movies. It really was standard operating procedure in the Soviet Block for the secret police … Continue reading →

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Images of the natural phenomenon were first captured in 1973.