Columnists

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE: Cyber War: Reality or Hype?

By Conn Hallinan
Tuesday January 10, 2012 - 09:51:00 AM

During his confirmation hearings this past June, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned the Senate, “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.” It was powerful imagery: a mighty fleet reduced to smoking ruin, an expansionist Asian power at the nation’s doorstep. -more-


New: Wild Neighbors: Another Round of the Name Game

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday January 10, 2012 - 11:15:00 PM
Common California aster: now it's a Symphyotrichum.

The taxonomists are at it again, reshuffling the natural order. This is not in itself a bad thing. Science keeps clarifying the evolutionary relationships among plants and animals, and their scientific names—the classic Latin or Latinoid binomials—are altered accordingly. For amateurs, though, it can be annoying. -more-


THE PUBLIC EYE: 2012: Will the Left Support Obama?

By Bob Burnett
Friday January 06, 2012 - 10:27:00 AM

January 1st marked the beginning of the transformative year predicted by the Mayan Calendar. Whether or not you believe that on December 21st a cataclysmic event will occur, you can agree that on November 6th there will be a monumental Presidential election to determine whether US democracy survives. An election the left can impact if they decide to support Barrack Obama and Democrats in general. -more-


ECLECTIC RANT: Obama’s Broken Promise on Gitmo’s Tenth Anniversary

By Ralph E. Stone
Friday January 06, 2012 - 02:12:00 PM

January 11, 2012 marks the tenth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay prison, an extrajudicial detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. After the Justice Department advised that the Guantanamo prison could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, the first twenty captives arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002. Guantanamo has become a place of prisoner mistreatment and even torture, and indefinite detention, an international embarrassment. Unfortunately, President Obama has broken his promise to close the prison for suspected terrorists. -more-


MY COMMONPLACE BOOK: (a diary of excerpts copied from printed books, with comments added by the reader.)

By Dorothy Bryant
Friday January 06, 2012 - 11:25:00 AM

The life of a thinking man is a series of retractions.

William Godwin (1756-1836)

Journalist, novelist , philosopher

You have learned something, and that always feels, at first, as if you had lost something.

From Major Barbara

by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Playwright, essayist
-more-


SENIOR POWER… It’s about Closure

By Helen Rippier Wheeler
Friday January 06, 2012 - 11:34:00 AM

Do you have a Donate Life California Registry ID in your wallet? Go to www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org Do you have an Advance Health Care Directive (California version)? Do you have a sticker on your driver’s license to indicate your willingness to have your body parts used in behalf of others after your death? Right now 21,000+ Californians are waiting for an organ transplant — 21% of the more than 100,000 people waiting across our country. One third will die while waiting. -more-