Columnists

The most famous running joke in the Peanuts comic strip repeats at the beginning of every football season. Charlie Brown asks Lucy to hold the ball for him so he can kick it. At the last moment, just before Charlie gets his foot on the pigskin, Lucy snatches it away. Despite years of torment, each new season Charlie Brown finds a reason to believe that Lucy will hold the ball down where he can kick it. But this never happens. Sound familiar? It’s the story of Barack Obama and the Republican Congress. -more-

What happened to the recent Arab Peace Initiative (API) unanimously endorsed by the 22-member Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut Summit of the Arab League? It is time for Israel to accept the API as a basis for peace negotiations. -more-

I am sitting at home after an uneventful outing of doing errands; I have a deep peacefulness as I look at the overcast light filter in through the blinds in my living room, and as I sit in my chair facing my computer. Things seem bright and cheerful, safe and sane, peaceful and comfortable. It has not always been this way. It has been literally decades that I haven't felt safe like this. And yet, the externals in my life are not so different. Sure, at times there have been crises that needed to be dealt with, but there were also uneventful times in which I should have felt at peace, and didn't. -more-