Published Articles

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

"There is a worrying trend in academic medicine which equates statistics with science, and sophistication in quantitative procedure with research excellence. The corollary of this trend is a tendency to look for answers to medical problems from people with expertise in mathematical manipulation and information technology, rather than from people with an understanding of disease and its causes.

Keyword(s): gun control, guns, Second Amendment, violence


Saturday, March 2, 2002

We had no choice but to punish the perpetrators and collaborators of the heinous 9-11 terrorist attack that left nearly 3,000 innocent Americans crying out for justice. It was an unprovoked attack, correctly an act of war, and the U.S. had good cause under the Just War doctrine (i.e., the Judeo-Christian principle establishing the right to defend oneself against an aggressor) to retaliate and to punish the guilty and discourage future acts of terrorism. Such dastardly barbarity should not go unpunished.

Keyword(s): freedom, U.S. Constitution, United Nations


Friday, February 22, 2002

In his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush proposed the formation of a USA Freedom Corps, calling for every American "to commit at least two years ­ 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime ­ to the service of your neighbors and your nation."

This will require 80 hours per year for every adult American. On Jan. 29, 2002, at another function, Bush further explained the concept and gave a pitch for the "volunteer" program that will require $560 million from taxpayers by 2003.

Keyword(s): freedom, national service


Monday, February 11, 2002

Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russell Feingold (D-WI) and the media have promoted their campaign finance "reform" bill (McCain-Feingold [S. 27] and Shays-Meehan [H.R. 2356]) as the solution to a "broken system" riddled with "too much money in politics." They also say that big, powerful, moneyed interests have a pervasive, vested interest in government that is detrimental to the public good.

Keyword(s): campaign finance reform, Second Amendment, threat to freedom


Friday, January 11, 2002

Most of us who enjoy reading books concerning our world, especially those dealing with acts of courage arising from human tragedy, find a few works that have a lasting effect on our lives, not just because of the subject, but because of the way in which it is presented. Few writers can fill the reader with an overwhelming sense of emotion that normally only comes with first hand experience. I found this in Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and Armando Valladares' Against all Hope.

Keyword(s): Castro, Cuba, Cuban Revolution


Thursday, January 10, 2002

The role of gun violence and street crime in the United States and the world is currently a subject of great debate among national and international organizations, including the United Nations. Because the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the individual right of American citizens to own private firearms, availability of firearms is greater in the U.S. than the rest of the world, except perhaps in Israel and Switzerland.

Keyword(s): guns, violence


Tuesday, January 1, 2002

From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America. How the Public-Health Establishment Puts Us at Risk, by economists James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, is a serious, eye-opening indictment of America’s public-health establishment. Bennett and DiLorenzo mark the release of the federal government’s Kerner Report of 1968 as the point when the public-health establishment (PHE), incarnated in the American Public Health Association (APHA), crossed its Rubicon and left the realm of science for the realm of politics.

Keyword(s): politics, public health


Saturday, October 6, 2001

This summer Bibb County Superior Court Judge Phil Brown ordered the new State Health Planning Review Board to review the open heart surgery certificate of need (CON) previously granted to Coliseum Medical Center. According to the judge, the former Board's decision was not clear in its findings and may not have followed legal requirements when it approved the CON for the hospital in September 2000.

Keyword(s): health care policy


Friday, September 28, 2001

America's Founding Fathers, our prescient, venerable predecessors, established for us a Constitutional Republic, limited government by the rule of law and with the consent of the governed. They also said, in the voice of Benjamin Franklin (1787), that our newly founded nation was and should remain a Republic, if we can keep it, if we can preserve it as a cherished legacy for posterity.

Keyword(s): freedom, terrorism, U.S. Constitution, United Nations


Friday, August 31, 2001

Georg Hegel (1770-1831), the father of dialectical idealism, which Karl Marx transmogrified and misappropriated as dialectical materialism, lamented that what we learn from history is that man does not learn its lessons! Despite what we have learned about the deleterious effects of draconian gun control in other countries, particularly during the last bloody century, politicians with authoritarian leanings, mostly Democrats but also some Republicans, continue to beat the drums calling for more gun control.

Keyword(s): gun control, guns, Second Amendment, threat to freedom