I recently read a Pickles cartoon strip that was eerily appropriate for this time of year. The Pickles Opal, the grandmother, looking at herself in front of a full-length mirror, declared to Earl, her husband, something to the effect that in the new year she was going to eat less, exercise more, lose weight, and generally be more health conscious. Earl said, "That sounds hard!" Opal replied, "My motto for the year is 'I can do hard things.'" Earl walked away muttering, "My motto is 'I can...

I remember that when I was a kid, Nannie Summers, my maternal grandmother, often told me that as one gets older, time flies. I never understood that. My Nannie Summers It seemed to me that the months in school were interminable. I enjoyed school, but the days seemed to creep by. The summers working with my brick-mason father, mixing mortar and carrying bricks and rodding joints in the heat and dust, seemed even longer. And it seemed that Christmas would never get here. Now, decades years...

During the debates surrounding the writing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution, two factions developed among the delegates, each representing different political philosophies. Those factions became known as the Federalists, who wanted a strong central government with broad, far-reaching powers, and the Anti-Federalists, who wanted the state governments to have greater powers and distinct and specific limitations on the federal government. The Bill of Rights Alexander Hamilton Foremost...