JFK's Reply to Netanyahu: War Need Not Be Inevitable

by Nomad

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will today address the US Congress in an attempt to influence foreign policy with regards to ongoing Iranian nuclear negotiations.

The search for a lasting peace in the Middle East sometimes seems a waste of time. Perhaps, as Kennedy once said, we need to define what we really mean when we think of peace.

In June 1963, President Kennedy gave one of his finest speeches of his presidency. It is known as his American University speech. 

Set against the most dangerous era of the Cold War when the Far Right demanded a tough line against the Communists, Kennedy chose to talk about the path to a lasting peace. At that time, it seemed so far-fetched.

Yet that fact did not stop the president from presenting his thoughts about peace with the Soviet Union: what it entailed, how it could be achieved and why it was a worthy and realistic goal to pursue.

The Story of Cass: When Homeless isn't Helpless

 by Nomad

Homeless Anthony Castelow defied the odds and turned his life around.  Once he had changed his life, he committed himself to helping others get the help they needed. 

Last Sunday a man you've probably never heard of died of a heart attack in his own home in Redford Michigan. I stresss the words "in his own home." As Detroit Free Press' Mitch Albom explains, a place called home, a place in which to live and to die was not something 55-year-old Anthony Castelow took for granted.
 On his final day, writes Albom, Castelow preached at the church, the subject of that last sermon was about "new beginnings."

Segregation and Dot Counts: What History Tells Us about Resistance to Progress

by Nomad

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the story behind this photograph? The young woman's name is Dorothy Counts.

We tend to think of the 1960s as the Era of the Social Movement but in fact, the great sweeps of reform began a decade earlier. The movement. it's true, reached its zenith during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. However, the impetus for social change began as a result of a constitutional challenge mostly that eventually made its way to the high court. 

It was the culmination of a campaign by The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its legal offspring, the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, against the doctrine of “separate but equal.” 

A Quote about Income Equality...from 1908

by Nomad

The book, Labor and Neighbor: An Appeal to First Principles, was publish in 1908, one year following the untimely death of its author, Ernest Crosby.

Texas Draft Law Forces Legally-Dead Pregnant Women to Deliver Unwanted Babies

by Nomad

One Texas legislator seems determined to stop at nothing to protect the life of the unborn. Even if it means keeping a clinically-dead mother alive long enough for the baby to be born. 

Fort Worth boasts one of the most conservative legislators that Texas has produced. Republican Rep. Matt Krause is the son of a Tyler, Texas pastor for- I kid you not- at Green Acres Baptist Church. 

Before entering politics, Krause was a intern and then Texas director of Liberty Counsel which is a non-profit legal and educational organization that, according to its mission statement, is committed to “restoring the culture one case at a time by defending the sanctity of human life, the traditional family, and religious liberties.”

His background therefore undoubtedly played a part in his decision to draft legislation that would open up a lot of complicated questions about patient and family rights versus the rights of the unborn. 

Molly Ivins on America's Long Struggle

by Nomad

American Enough: The Surprising Genealogical Trail of President Barack Obama

 by Nomad

Looking into the President's family history is like looking at a snapshot of American history, as far back as the first decades of its colonial period when the disgraceful practice of slavery was being rationalized and legalized.

Back in 2012, several news outlets, including the New York Times, mentioned one interesting side-note about the Barack Obama story. Since his father was Kenyan and his mother was white, it had been long assumed that Obama had, unlike most African Americans no connection to the dark history of slavery. Apparently, this was not the case. 

At least not, however, on his father's side, but on his mother's, it's another story.