On Monday, Nov. 2, every National Geographic staffer was told to report to the magazine’s Washington, D.C., headquarters the next day to await a phone call or e-mail from Human Resources. Continue reading
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Author Archives: Walter Brasch
The Republicans’ rhetoric of hate and fear
Fear, laced with paranoia, is driving the American response against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States. Continue reading
Snuggling up to celebrities is not part of journalism training
One of the basic tenets of journalism ethics and practices is that reporters must keep their distance from news sources. Continue reading
The 24/7 election and media carousel
The national news media—and their sidekicks, the cackling pundits—had been asking the same questions the past six months. “Will he? Won’t he? Should he? Shouldn’t he? Can he? Can’t he?” Continue reading
Censoring Books is suppressing freedom of expression
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world’s largest trade convention for publishers and vendors. Continue reading
Mass murders are good for business
Shortly after the mass murders at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore., President Obama predicted the extreme right wing would crank out press releases declaring the nation needs fewer gun control laws and more guns. Continue reading
‘Paging Dr. Doctivity’: Medicine evolves into a business model
Beneath a three-column headline in my local newspaper was a barely-edited press release. Continue reading
The boss who fought for the working class
He was born into poverty in New Hampshire in 1811. Continue reading
Katrina: A 10-year review
This week is the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the southeastern gulf coast by Hurricane Katrina. Continue reading
Canned pleasure: The thrill of the kill
Would you like to go to Zimbabwe, kill and behead a lion, just like that dentist from Minnesota or the physician from Pittsburgh recently did? They paid about $50,000 each for that experience. Continue reading
America’s culture of cheating: Tom Brady, the Patriots and deflategate
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady says he had nothing to do with having air removed from game balls. Continue reading
Pennsylvania school is flushed by a problem
Ten-year-old Kaitlyn Montgomery, a fourth grade student at Park Elementary School in Munhall, Pa., now has access to that school’s restrooms. Continue reading
America’s morality police
In Saudi Arabia, the Mutaween are 3,500 public officials and thousands of volunteers who work for the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They are responsible for enforcing strict religious laws. Among the many laws are those that require all women to wear niqabs and black gowns when in public. Continue reading
’Rithmatic doesn’t add up in one school district
The Danville Education Association (Pa.) has been operating without a contract for three years. Continue reading
‘Made in America’ is just a political slogan to conservatives
Conservatives in Congress have once again proven they are un-American and unpatriotic. This time, it’s because of their fierce approval for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Continue reading
A textbook case of willful distortion
HarperCollins says it’s sorry. It says it regrets not including Israel on a map of the Middle East in an atlas it published and distributed in the Middle East. It says all remaining copies of the atlas will be pulped. Continue reading
Setting America’s priorities for 2015
Marci Rosenberg, a senior speech language pathologist at the University of Michigan, earns about $73,000 a year. Continue reading
The fracking boom is a fracking bubble
Gas prices have plunged to the low $2 range—except in Pennsylvania. Continue reading
Practicing subsidized un-medicine
Clutching newspaper clippings in one hand and a medical bag loaded with seeds in the other, my ersatz friend Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, knocking down pregnant ladies, students, the elderly, and two burly construction workers who were waiting for a bus, rushed past me, leaving me in a close and personal encounter with the concrete. Continue reading
The annual avariciousness assault and a non-existent war upon Christmas
It’s now been about a week after Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Continue reading
Perceptions of reality—and a failure to indict
She quietly walked into the classroom and stood there, just inside the door, against a wall. Continue reading
How Americans came to oppose fracking
For the first time since high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as nonconventional fracking, was developed, more Americans oppose it than support it. Continue reading
A nation of fear
Maintenance workers at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa., airport shot and killed a bear and her three cubs. Continue reading
Cowardice plagues Pennsylvania House of Representatives
The Institute for Legislative Action of the National Rifle Association (NRA-ILA) gives politicians Defender of Freedom awards. The award, accompanied by a glowing press release, has little to do with freedom; it has everything to do with legislators advancing the NRA agenda. Continue reading
Pennsylvania’s politics of virtue
The Pennsylvania Senate, possibly for the first time in its history, stood up against the NRA leadership and extreme gun-rights groups, and voted to ban pigeon shoots. The senators correctly called the ban a matter not of gun rights but of eliminating animal cruelty. Continue reading
A Swift Boatload of lies
“Gov. Tom Corbett, who claims he opposes legalization of marijuana, was seen behind a barn smoking weed. Just a-puffin’ and a-grinnin.’” Continue reading
Railroad ‘bomb trains’: Speeding to disaster
It’s 3 p.m., and you’re cruising down a rural road, doing about 50 mph. Continue reading
House committee: No Benghazi scandal
The House Select Committee on Intelligence, following almost a two-year intense investigation, unanimously determined there is no basis for what has become known as the Benghazi Scandal. Continue reading
AIDS advances may be compromised by legislative inaction
Researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia may have found an entry-way to the cure for AIDS. Continue reading
Whites to openly pack heat on ‘gun rights education’ march through a Houston black neighborhood
A group of white gun-rights advocates plan to sling rifles, shotguns, and semi-automatic assault weapons onto their bodies, and walk through a Black neighborhood in Houston. Continue reading
Terrorism on American soil
Posted on November 30, 2015 by Walter Brasch
During this past week a 3-year-old boy in Rock Hill, S.C., killed himself when he was playing with a loaded gun in his house. Continue reading →