George Floyd As the incident of police brutality in Minnesota unfolds on the TV screen, with more videos and evidence produced and murder charges filed, my mind relives the incident that gave rise to my latest novel, Blood on Their Hands. By the way, it’s on sale on Amazon in the Kindle edition for $.99 until May 31. It was 2008, and my computer was giving me fits – as usual. I went to the office supply store in Lake Worth Beach, down here in Palm Beach County, Florida, and d

Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinnie Two movies that I enjoyed immensely were Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood, and my all-time favorite comedy, My Cousin Vinnie, with Joe Pesci knocking it out of the park as Vinnie. In 2008, the year Gran Torino  was released, a computer specialist at a well-known office supply store came to my condo to solve a problem with my computer without charging me. That was against policy of the store, which of course wanted to make money for helping wi

President Trump/GOP congressional leaders I for the life of me can think of only two things that have benefited our economy under Trump: the tax cuts and the removal of regulations. But the tax cuts haven’t done much to boost wages, and won’t, in the long run, be very beneficial because 83 percent went to the richest 1 percent, who don’t spend much of it. They already have plenty to spend. Even worse, the cuts add a lot to the debt, which will require more borrowing and drive

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz Last week, I penned an open letter to a friend, delineating why his intention to vote for Donald Trump was abysmally ill-advised. What I didn’t mention was that another Republican candidate is even worse: Ted Cruz. Trump has at least said a few things that made sense, and he appears to be less cunning and callous than Cruz, the man who worked relentlessly to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood funding in the fall. Cruz is off-the-charts right w

Mona Charen I’m about as big a fan of syndicated columnist Mona Charen as I am of Donald Trump – which is to say, not so much. However, she pointed out something in a Dec. 7 column that opened my eyes wider. Charen quoted a Pew poll of 2011 that showed 7 percent of American Muslims believed “suicide bombing or other violence against civilians is justified to defend Islam against its enemies sometimes.” Say what?! That’s one out of every 14 Muslims in the country. Five percent

Fellow Floridians, have you read the newspapers today? Tax cuts that you would have received aren’t going to happen. Florida Gov. Rick Scott Why? Because that money has to pay hospital expenses which would have been paid by the federal government if our dearly beloved governor, Rick Scott, and the like-minded state House Republicans hadn’t exercised their hatred of President Obama in refusing it. The House, supported by Scott, voted Friday against the Senate plan to expand Me

Once again, the Republicans in the House of Representatives are showing their true colors – and they ain’t pretty. They long have railed against Obama because the middle and lower classes have so little, and charge him with causing the nation’s debt to spiral out of control. Then they voted last week to contribute precisely to those problems by repealing the estate tax on multimillionaires and billionaires. President Obama This is what Americans voted for in November’s landsl

President Obama With the primaries over here in Florida, the midterm elections loom a little more than two months away. A poll shows Democratic and Republican candidates in a dead heat for elections to the Republican-dominated House. The Senate, now controlled by the Democrats, is in grave danger of falling to the Republicans, which would give the party total control of the legislature and make the job of a Democratic president even more daunting than it has been with a split

Cutting defense President Barack Obama The Obama administration wants to cut the defense budget, eliciting howls of protest from Republicans. Of course – while they continue to decry the deficit and the national debt. The deficit has shown substantial decline since 2012, including a 37 percent drop from April 2013 to this year. The Republican solution to continued improvement is slashing social programs that benefit the middle and lower classes. But don’t touch defense, which