While most of the public and media attention the past two years has been focused on high prices and inflation, these issues take second place behind the public’s top concern, which is big government, according to a new Gallup poll. Concern over the uncontrolled southern border is in third position

As our nation reacts to two avoidable deaths, Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tenn., and activist/protestor Manuel Teran, illegally camping on the grounds of the former Old Atlanta Prison Farm, one similarity stands out between the two deaths.

I took office as Rockdale County clerk of Superior and State Courts on Jan. 21, 2021. I was a new clerk starting my job during a global pandemic caused by COVID-19.

No adjective is sufficient to describe the reaction one gets from watching five Memphis police officers beat 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to within an inch of his life. He later died of his injuries in a local hospital.

In our family, no food is held in higher esteem than the biscuit. Cornbread runs a close second, but there’s an art to making a biscuit that the easy-going, non-frills cornbread does not require.

The Vietnam War ended officially on Jan. 27, 1973 with signing of the Paris Peace Accords.

State Representative Jon Burns (R-District 159), of Newington in Effingham County, is not new to the State House, having joined the body in 2005, nor is he new to leadership, having served as the GOP House majority leader since 2015. But he is new to the Office of Speaker, arguably the second most powerful elected position in state government, and he will be bringing a slightly new approach to wielding that big gavel.

In our relativistic age in which everyone has his or her own "truth" and none is to be preferred over another so long as the individual feels good about it, why should anything be considered scandalous?

Like Halley’s Comet that only comes around every 75 years, the resignation of a top politician from office is a rare occurrence.

United States government officials specializing in trade began important, in-depth negotiations with counterparts from Taiwan on Jan. 14 in Taipei, the capital of the island.

The death at age 54 of Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis, got me thinking again about the two-edged sword that is fame.

By the late 1970s, the famed nearly 50-foot tall Cyclorama painting of the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War was moldy, wet and rotting in places and making its way toward a landfill somewhere.

My niece, Nicole, was telling me about a family meeting that she and her husband, Jay, had recently conducted with their five children.

Last July, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, visited Jakarta where he said China's military has become significantly more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years.

It happened 15 years ago yet the memory sticks to me like cotton candy to a child’s hand.

If one discounts Alaska's Aleutian Islands, Hawaii is about as far - geographically and politically - from Washington, D.C., as one can get.

My first visit to California in the late ’80s was part of an ill-fated love connection. While I did find elements of the “Endless Summer,” “California Girls” and “California Dreamin’” that I had come to expect from listening to the Beach Boys for years, I found San Francisco to be cold (it w…

It’s been the honor of my life serving the good peoples of Newton and Morgan counties. It’s a testament to your generous hearts that you could so thoroughly welcome myself and my family, even though we’re not from here. 

By custom and habit, this writer regularly – though not always – devotes a column relatively early in the New Year to positive and encouraging economic, political, social and other trends in our world.

After months of ignoring the problem and demonstrably false claims by his Homeland Security secretary that the southern border is "secure," President Biden is finally visiting the area this week as part of a trip to Mexico.

New Year's Eve 1981 was probably the coldest sporting event and evening of my life, in 50-yard line seats, in the very top row of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. My maternal grandmother, a Falcon's season ticket holder, had given me the tickets... but I can remember very little about that entire evening, other than the biting wind and freezing rain, my hot date... not quite charmed by the event or the smuggled bottle of holiday Seagrams.

A while back, Tink and I had a meeting to pitch a television show on the Fox Studio Lot in Los Angeles.

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth…,” is a useful starting place for discussion of the influence of Pope Francis, who is proving to be a remarkably active and activist leader of the Roman Catholic Church. The holidays are an excellent time for reflection.

The new slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives lacks something besides its slim majority and the battle over leadership positions. It lacks intellectual depth.

In the 1930s, President Herbert Hoover’s second-in-command was Vice President Charles Curtis, who had once been a powerful Senator. A magazine article about Vice President Curtis is credited with coining a phrase that has endured for almost a hundred years: “It’s lonely at the top.”

This past year, it seems that I spent most of the time taking big steps over jutted holes where my foot stopped just short of another rut. I’d balance for a moment, thinking how to clear the next hole.

The New Year is upon us. 2023. It seems like only yesterday that we were up at midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1999, wringing our hands at what catastrophes might await us at the beginning of Y2K – the year 2000. It was thought there could be a problem in the coding of computerized systems that would create chaos in computers and computer networks around the world as the year 2000 made its presence known. Some even predicted our telephone network and power grid would blow up as a result. It didn’t happen. As we approach Y2KXXIII, I am still getting calls wanting to extend the warranty on a car I don’t own and Georgia Power is still hosing its customers.

People speak of a new year as turning the page, or starting out fresh, or forgetting the past.

At the start of a new year, I like to look back a century ago to see what has changed and what hasn't.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is ending 2022 in a strong and highly visible manner. On Dec. 21, he addressed both houses of the United States Congress and received multiple standing ovations. Time magazine has named him Person of the Year.

Eighteen Republican senators voted for the monstrosity known as the $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill, thus forever relinquishing their claim to belong to a party committed to less spending, smaller government, and personal responsibility.

In a theatrical performance the worst thing that can happen is to have a predictable outcome.

I’m filled with a renewed sense of hope all of a sudden. Truthfully, I don’t know why I feel such hopefulness.

When King David ruled over all of Israel, one of the many Psalms he wrote included this verse: "Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing." (Psalm 146:3-4 NIV)

As we wave farewell or at least say "see ya next time," to this pandemic, and soon after 2022, I note that both took from me my mother, as well as several irreplaceable and close friends. Those losses helped me appreciate those still in my world even more and clarified that I might let more of them know what they mean to me, while they are around to hear it.

Tink is getting on my last nerve.

I am trying to do business and keep my company going but he’s like a little, dark cartoon cloud popping in on my deal-making. Normally, he would only know what I tell him, which means he wouldn’t hear an entire conversation.

Christmas includes the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle fought by the United States. This was hell on earth.

I read a great piece in the Tribune-Review about the nostalgia many Pittsburghers hold for their favorite old suburban shopping malls — especially around the holidays. Malls around the country are in trouble these days. Experts say their Golden Age ended years ago, and Pittsburgh proves it.

I know some of you expect hard-hitting political commentary when reading a newspaper column. Well, not today. There are no elections any time soon, and we could all use a break.

If you like cream in your coffee (if not, the analogy works with any other drink), keep pouring after you have reached what you would normally drink. If you pour the cream long enough it will replace the coffee.