Over the 4th of July weekend, I devoured a fascinating book and, in the course of it, learned a new synonym for “bureaucracy” — “cutcherry” — taken from Hindi and apparently originating with the British East-India Company’s bureau office in what is now Chennai.
The book, The Professor and the Madman ~
All of us at times become dispirited.
As I’ve viewed immigration over the last 40 years, passionate advocates have come and gone, fortunate foreign citizens have been granted green cards and then naturalized; but the harshness and hard-heartedness of immigration law as a reflection of American cultural norms hasn’t really diminished.
For example, back
By Nicole Kersey and Angelo A. Paparelli
Irony was plentiful last week in Washington and around the country.
One particularly hawkish Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who never met a war-on-terror strategy he disliked), glommed onto Senator Rand Paul’s filibustery
As Republicans join Democrats in contemplating reform of the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system, the final line of the Pledge of Allegiance (“with liberty and justice for all”) is the best place to start.
Revitalizing our broken and outdated 20th Century immigration laws to respond to the needs of 21st Century America will turn in large
[Blogger’s note:
Dear Readers: I promise that this post is indeed about immigration and the quadrennial election on Tuesday. Please read to the end, beyond the meandering yet relevant introduction, to see the connection.]
Just over four years ago, David Foster Wallace, a gifted, troubled writer of wide acclaim, took his life. Fans of his writing, myself
Debate scorers and pollsters called it even. Mitt Romney won the first Presidential debate, essentially by showing up. Barack Obama prevailed in the second, a verbal brawl, by departing the state of suspended animation, entering New York state, and manning up.
Observers of the Twittersphere honed in on one line — Mitt Romney’s non-responsive comment to a question in
Andrew Jackson had his “Kitchen Cabinet,” Franklin Roosevelt his “Brain Trust.” Seth Godin has his “Tribes,” web-based “silos of interest.”
I’ve been a member of many tribes (as I write this I’m recalling my tattered T-shirt from my own and my adult daughter’s Indian Princess days, many moons ago [click here
