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Julie wouldn’t look me in the eye. She tore off bits of paper napkin and rolled them into little balls. Every few seconds she’d glance at her girlfriend pleading for help. She was trying to explain what happened to her marriage. And then she broke down. Tears welled up in her eyes and she put her head on my shoulder. Her girlfriend reached out and stroked her blonde hair.

Julie’s 41 with two teenagers and she’s alone and scared, not to mention devastated. A neighbor ended up with her husband. The road to love and happiness: what a brutal road.

The recent elections on the other side of the Atlantic continue to cause concern around the planet and news coverage in the United States is both short on explanation and perspective. That is why I asked Dr. Bill Downs to help sense of it all. Downs serves as Associate Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Georgia State University and is the author of numerous books and articles on contemporary politics in Europe. His most recent book, Political Extremism in Democracies: Combating Intolerance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) examines xenophobia and anti-immigrant parties across the continent.

The apparently irresistible campaign contributions and lobbying that seduced national and state legislators into signing onto privatization and deregulation schemes over the past decades brought us the current economic mess. The push for nuclear power is ... Read on →

By prompting people like Lynn Tilton to decide that "enough is enough." Well, to be honest, as a neighbor tells it, Lynn Tilton is responsible for the rescue of the paper mill in Gorham, NH because her ... Read on →

Can an anti-woman, anti-black, anti-senior, anti-sick, anti-worker, anti-unemployed, anti-poor, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-education, anti-union, anti-peace, anti-environment, anti-science, anti-Wall-Street-reform, anti-Geneva-Convention, anti-world presidential candidate win?* That seems unfair. Let me re-phrase it. Can a candidate wishing to robo-sign teapublican ... Read on →

I am a Democrat, and I am proud of it. However, the S.C. Press Association distributes this column, and neither they nor I want it to be a weekly partisan rant — there’s far too much of ... Read on →

I can't speak for crooks, drifters, and others standing before a judge, but law-abiding Georgians love their courthouses and well they should. Georgia has one of America’s great collections of courthouses. The buildings range from Greek ... Read on →

Science says no, but court officers not reassured. If real-life technology solved crimes as easily as the methods seen on "CSI" and similar TV shows, there’d be a lot more convictions for criminal offenses in the U.S. "CSI," ... Read on →

Lots of people have visited Bentonville, Ark., home of Walmart, for commercial reasons. Now there's another major reason to visit: to go to a new museum with a superb collection of American art. ... Read on →

How often we drive along giving no thought to the road we travel. And more often than that we give no thought to how the road got its name. In my case, I’m ... Read on →

I recently served on a panel at the 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs that was titled “How Liberals Think,” a question I’ve pondered as long as I can remember. Beyond the classic dictionary ... Read on →

Government by the people is the ultimate DIY enterprise. Mainly, we benefit each other by taking turns. Conservatives are people who, for whatever reason, do not know where their interests lie. And, having ... Read on →

Remember Ronny Zamora, the Miami teenager who shot and killed an elderly neighbor in 1977 and then ignited a national debate about television’s influence on behavior when he and his lawyer argued that ... Read on →

Huey P. Long is surely the most assassinated figure in American political history. Although he was murdered only once – bullet holes still visible ... Read on →

Do South Carolinians hate government? Is there something within our political DNA here in the Palmetto State that causes us to hate government – ... Read on →

The term "fundamentalist ideology" probably evokes the idea of Islamic fanaticism to many, Christian or Jewish extremists to others, but rarely are the promoters ... Read on →

Long ago we took great vacations. Simple trips beyond imitation. This might be a column to save especially if you remember A1A and Burma-Shave. — Despite ... Read on →

With my teaching assistant contract drawing to its close, and my life in Vannes, France also nearing its conclusion, there remained one final French ... Read on →

Since the South’s interactions with the rest of the country are simply replete with examples of “incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the ... Read on →

A two-fer, if ever there was one. According to the White House Press office, both the First Lady and the President spoke. However, despite Republican carping about the ... Read on →

4th Century BC Greek Cup Depicts Lost Wax Foundry I tagged along with painter and sculptor Richard Cecil, friend and former Pine Lake neighbor, when he picked up the ... Read on →

I have come both reluctantly and late to the belief that President Obama will lose re-election unless he moves, and moves quickly, to prosecute the main Wall Street ... Read on →

The place where you spend your formative years can draw you back with the pull of a magnet to metal. Or it can repel, the desire to divorce ... Read on →