Three years ago, Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University, constructed a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship
An idea from the If-I-Ruled-The-World Department — If you believe the news reports, a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. Formerly a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Ukraine became independent following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But President of Russia Vladimir Putin, in an apparent bid to put Humpty
Do you need more evidence of how polarized the country is? I have just read that political works currently hold the top spots on the New York Times best-seller list of hardcover nonfiction books. At the very top is American Marxism by the Fox News host Mark Levin. According to the description on Amazon.com, “In American
It’s fun to play games, and much of that fun can come from winning. If it’s a simple game, like checkers, it’s easy to keep score. For every checker you capture, your opponent loses one. Simple! This straight-forward approach is called a zero-sum game: “an advantage that is won by one of two sides is
You may remember John Boehner as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. His political resume also includes being the Representative for Ohio’s 8th congressional district from 1991 to 2015, the House Minority Leader from 2007 until 2011, and House Majority Leader from 2006 until 2007. During his time in government service, Boehner was more
If you think the current political period is divisive, consider the era following the Civil War. It was a time when some thought our very democracy was broken. The trauma of war was followed by economic and technological disruption, and many turned to extreme partisanship. The result was an increased voter turnout in the closest,
You may recall reading about the U.S. Women’s National Team in soccer protesting about not being treated equally with the men’s team. You may remember their 2019 gender-discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation over pay and workplace issues (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/u-s-soccer-reaches-settlement-world-cup-women-s-team-n1249603). Well, it’s come up again, this time in softball. The Women’s College World Series
Are we a racist country? No matter your politics, the inescapable conclusion is if we aren’t today (a big if), we certainly have been for most of our history. I do a lot of reading, especially about our past, and I keep running across these little reminders of how divisive our race relations used to
The events of this election cycle have caused a renewed examination of our democracy. Our system of government survived a president who either didn’t believe or was unwilling to accept the election results that denied him a second term. This proved the U.S. Constitution is a strong document, capable of surviving the most difficult challenge.
Now that the presidential election has been 99 percent settled, the next contest on the political sports schedule is the lineup of President-Elect Biden’s Cabinet. So far, he is keeping his promise to emphasize diversity, which is good because there are a lot of constituencies that expect to be represented. Of course, it wasn’t always
