I was born and raised in Connecticut. After living in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York, I spent 25 years after marrying Elly in Connecticut before we moved to Maryland and then West Virginia for work reasons.
Until my working for CSC as a commuter to and from Texas took up the time, I spent five years as a Justice of the Peace in Marlborough, CT. My specialty was marrying other atheists like me.
US president-elect Barack Obama is sending evaluators to study the sprawling US bureaucracy to help him determine how best to meet his administration’s goals when he takes office on January 20.
Obama’s 450-strong transition team will scour more than 100 departments and agencies for data to underpin new policies as soon as his inauguration ushers in an historic presidency.
The air is crisp, the sky bright blue, the leaves have passed their red-orange peak and are falling around the headstones of those who gave our nation their lives.
As I am writing this column on Veterans Day 2008, the sacrifices of our fallen military heroes are being remembered, briefly but respectfully, on the morning television news. But as you are reading this column, the sacrifices of our military veterans will already have been pushed back to their traditional place on the lowest rung of your government’s agenda ladder. Our nation’s leaders will have moved on to their own urgent priorities: The closing of one presidency, the opening of another; the convening of the new Congress.
It appears that Barack Obama will make closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay an early order of business for his administration. The prison has been so tainted in U.S. and world opinion and so damaging to the United States’ reputation that it is simply not worth keeping.
The problem is what to do with the 250 or so prisoners who remain there. Those who are cleared for release should be repatriated — if we can find a country willing to take them.
For better or worse, or whether it’s throwing good money after bad, momentum is building in Washington for an auto industry bailout, much larger than the $25 billion already promised.
Congressional Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are in favor. President-elect Barack Obama has indicated that he is inclined to support some sort of rescue. And Bush administration opposition seems to be weakening.