February 6 - 27, 2003

February 27, 2003 - For thirty-two years the children of America were invited to be part of Mr. Roger’s neighborhood. The gentle voice and the corny rhymes were familiar and comforting to generations of our children and the butt of cutting humor for cynical adults. Mr. Rogers was diminished as the definition of a wimp. But Mr. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian, tackled tough questions for young minds. His program dealt with death, divorce, and tried to explain war to them when their fathers and older brothers went off to fight in the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood described the world I had grown up in – where neighbors cared and came together to mourn their neighbors’ losses and celebrate their common triumphs. Critics claimed it was a message of trusting naivety and too simplistic for a complex and modern world. In 2001 Fred Rogers came out of his retirement to make a public service spot aimed at helping children deal with the September 11th tragedy.

Fred Rogers died this morning, Perhaps it is as well. He always ended his program with his signature refrain, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Increasingly in this complex and modern world the answer to Mister Rogers question has been. “No”. Neighbors care about each other. We fight each other for the biggest piece of the pie. Neighbors reach down to help one another climb the ladder. We scramble for the top, kicking the hands of those who try to grasp the rungs below us. From the streets of our cities to the twisting pathways of international conflict we have replaced neighborhoods with gang turf. Instead of looking for common ground on which to build a foundation of common understanding we look for a killing ground on which to base a campaign of conquest.

The sun has set on the lovely day in the neighborhood and the dawn will bring a storm’s thunder and lighting.

Goodbye, Mr. Rogers. I did want to be your neighbor.

February 24, 2003 - The Prairie Street wars started reliably every spring, before the heat of summer drove us to the shade of our porches and the elm trees along the parkway. They had to be fought in the early spring because the combatants had to be reunited by baseball season to form the Prairie Street Rangers, that fabled nine that ruled the sandlot league and put and end to the pennant hopes of the Eades Street Tigers and the Southside Supermen. We had to declare a truce between the warriors because the Prairie Street home diamond was in our big backyard and the Rangers’ best pitcher was Kenny Warmbier who was the leader of the enemy...click here for entire article

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE

February 20, 2003 - On September 11, 2001 the sun set on a tower of billowing smoke. 3000 people hailing from 60 countries around the world had been murdered by a band of international terrorists in a plot that both shocked and unified the world. From nation after nation the sounds of grieving tears blended with voices vowing to cooperate to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice. On September 12, 2001 the world stood shoulder to shoulder with America and looked to her President to lead the world wide posse in pursuit of the criminal who hatched and directed the world’s most atrocious crime. The international pursuit of the guilty began then and crossed both national borders and cultural frontiers as the world supported the United States even into the incomplete Afghanistan War...click here for entire article

February 19, 2003 - In 1991 America went to war, fought a quick campaign, declared victory and came home. It was a righteous war, if unfinished, to repel aggression and was supported by a broad based coalition of nations and an overwhelmingly bi-partisan majority of the American people. It was costly – an estimated $60 Billion – but that cost was shared by America’s allies. In the aftermath the American economy slipped into recession and an Administration that had enjoyed a popularity unmatched since Franklin Roosevelt saw that popularity evaporate by election day...click here for entire article

February 13, 2003 - If you grew up in the 40s or 50s you already know the drill. Duck and Cover! At the alert we were taught to crouch on our knees with our foreheads pressed firmly to the floor, cover the back of our heads with our hands or our coats and close our eyes tightly against the flash. It sounds so ridiculous now but our government had assured us and we believed that if we followed those simple instructions we could survive the devastation of a nuclear attack and by surviving we were contributing to the defeat of Godless Communism. So we practiced and prostrated ourselves like observant Moslems at prayer and tried not to be afraid...click here for entire article

February 12, 2003 - In November 2003 it will be Seven Score – One Hundred Forty years – since the President of the United States stood on a rough platform erected in the corner of a Pennsylvania cemetery and spoke to the occasion. He spoke of a government of the People, for the People and by the People. He was in the middle of a conflict among brothers testing whether our nation could endure. . We are at the brink of a new war and we, like the generation of that President, face a test as vital to the future of this nation as any overcome by Abraham Lincoln...click here for entire article

February 10, 2003 - Professor Moriarty, evil genius and hatcher of diabolical plots; organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected has been supplanted as the bet? noir of our imaginations in the Twenty-first Century by Osama Bin Laden. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, diabolical genius and arch nemesis of Bond – James Bond has his own Twenty-first Century avatar in Saddam Hussein. Oh, Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are real life villains true enough capable of plumbing the depths of evil on their own account, but the drama being written by the Bush Administration credits them both with sinister powers approaching the super human. As the plot unfolds in this murky mystery it becomes more clear that their roles at the center of the drama are mere McGuffins, Hitchcockian devices to divert the audience attention away from the final twist in the denouement...click here for entire article

February 9, 2003 - In the frenzy of the preparation for the Second Iraqi War we have lost sight of the war we are already in. We seem to have forgotten that for more than a year America has been engaged in combat operations in that wild tribal country we call Afghanistan. It has been pushed off of our collective radar screen by the events surrounding the Bush Administration’s drive to justify its policy of launching a preemptive war in Iraq. Yet today American troops occupy a hostile country, conduct combat patrols and are injured and killed on Afghanistan’s plain in the American inning of the ancient Great Game...click here for entire article

February 6, 2003 - Often a lawyer finds himself presenting a case that is only thinly supported by the available evidence. It is a challenge to the lawyer in such a circumstance to craft an argument drawing reasonable inferences from the evidence to support his client’s position while not giving the jury a reason to think the advocate a fool. That was the position that Secretary of State Colin Powell found himself in before the United Nations Security Council arguing the case for the Second Iraqi War. In his argument he demonstrated that, had he not pursued a military career, he would have made an effective lawyer...click here for entire article