The debate has shaken America. People were stunned from the moment Joe Biden opened mouth and his voice was raspy and halting. We all know he struggled through and looked like a confused old man. He was perfect prey for one of the all time political bullies. Biden couldn’t come back fast and clearly enough. The lies and delusions that Trump spewed out were as troubling as Biden’s performance. Trump told a bizarre story of doctors putting a nine month fetus “aside” during an abortion. He said fifty-one experts thought Roe v. Wade should be overturned. On immigration, he said immigrants are coming in illegally and taking jobs from black people which black leaders, of course, took as racist. Biden or the moderators didn’t challenge him on any of these ridiculous claims as he painted this dark picture of America. It reminded me of the “America Carnage” inaugural speech in 2016.

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Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry just signed a bill to require a poster sized display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state. He proudly says, “I can’t wait to be sued.” And he will be. The ACLU and the Freedom from Religion Foundation have promised to sue over this obvious unconstitutional law that violates the separation of church and state. Landry’s reasoning, “If you want to respect the rule of law you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses”. He does have a history of making things up. In a June 2012 radio interview he claimed the Obama administration told the TSA to allow Muslims to pass through security. TSA said this was not true. Landry and state legislature are operating out of fear.

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June is Supreme Court season, and we should be very worried. All the big case decisions come at the end of June when the term ends and the justices get three month off and we have to live with what they’ve done. So far, we’ve gotten the ridiculous bump stock decision. You’ll recall the concert massacre in Las Vegas in 2018 when a gunman, using a bump stock on his rifle, fired hundreds of rounds down from a hotel window on an outdoor concert killing sixty people and wounding hundreds more. Even Trump thought this was madness and issued a ban on bump stocks. A gun dealer in Austin, Texas, not a surprise, went to court after the ATF confiscated two bump stocks from his store. Machines gun were outlawed in 1934. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas the court ruled that bump stocks are not included in the machine gun ban and could only be banned if congress passed a specific law banning them. Tell that to the people who were at that Vegas concert.

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I found it odd that former colleague and friend Rob Feldman didn’t respond to an invitation to lunch. We had started having occasional lunches with our friend Tom Kranz. We all worked together at WCAU-TV back in the eighties. Tom had reconnected with Rob. I hadn’t seen Rob in forty years. After no response for over a week, Tom got a text from another friend who was also having trouble reaching Rob. We were now starting to think something may really be wrong. Tom said he was going to call the police in Ottsville, Pennsylvania in Bucks County and ask them to do a well check on Rob who lived alone in an apartment. The police officer who answered the phone said he knew Rob and that Rob suffered a stroke while out of the country. He was back in the country but the officer didn’t know where he was.

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They have been called “the Golden Years”. They even made a successful TV show about them. A new version is coming back by the way. Let’s talk about the seventies. They come after the sixties when many of us are finishing up our careers and looking forward to retirement, travel, grandkids, no money worries, if we thought about saving for retirement in our twenties, thirties, forties and fifties, and for some us, golf. This is followed by the eighties…maybe. While many good things happen in the seventies, our bodies and minds start tell us, “Hey, you’re not as young as you used to be.” You will find yourself talking to friends about heath issues, your latest doctors visit, and what medication you’re taking. There is nothing like old people sitting around comparing ailments. In your seventies, you will have friends who have joint replacements, heart issues, like afib, cataracts, memory loss and more serious conditions that start to put a timetable on your life.

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One of the most important and consequential trials in American history is now under way in New York City. A former president is on trial for making payments to a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair and then falsifying business records to cover it up. The general pubic will not be allowed to see any of it. It will be followed by three more even more important trails. The general public will be allowed to see the one in Georgia state court where Donald Trump is being tried for trying to overturn election results including a threatening phone call to the state’s Secretary of State. Federal courts do not allow cameras. So we will not see the case in Florida federal court where Trump is accused of stuffing secret government documents all over his estate in Florida, including piling them up in a bathroom. And finally, the most serious case of all in WashingtonDC federal court where Trump is accused of trying to over turn to 2020 election results that led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

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Will it ever stop? The pounding rain across the country is holding us all hostage. The rain is bad enough, but there are parts of the middle of the country being destroyed by tornadoes. People’s homes gone in an instant and changing their lives forever. As I write this, Tornado Watches were issued for parts of Delaware. The northeast never used to get tornadoes. Times have changed. We’re in our third straight day of pounding rain with more coming tomorrow. This past Saturday, Philadelphia got 3.09 inches of rain, a single day record. In March, Philadelphia got double the rain it usually gets in March.

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Giving up is something you never want to do in sports and most anything in life you’ve worked hard to achieve. College basketball is in the middle of the first weekend of March Madness. With two more weekends to go, millions will be watching and betting on their school if they managed to get into the tournament. St. Bonaventure University has a long history of basketball tradition. As members of the Atlantic Ten Conference, the committee usually takes only the conference champion and offers one or two at large bids. The Bonnies finished in the middle of the pack and won two A-Ten tournament games to reach the semi-finals where they lost to Duquesne the eventual champion. The Bonnies finished the season and playoffs with twenty wins. Not quite good enough to get a NCAA tournament bid.

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The first book ban in America is believed to be in 1637 in Quincey, Massachusetts. No surprise, the intolerant Puritans didn’t like the book. “New English Canaan” was a three volume work by Thomas Morton. It was about the history, beliefs and practices of Native Americans and the poor treatment they suffered at the hands of the Puritans. These are the same Puritans who ran the Salem Witch Trials years later. There is a long history of attempts, some successful, to ban books that certain people think are offensive especially to children. Most are politically conservative and religious and believe they know best about what is suitable for everyone else and their children.

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Are you ready? We are all getting an extra day this year. There is a long history. Some of it is true, some of it created out of the mist of history. No less an authority than The Farmer’s Almanac says a leap year is evenly divisible by four and century years that are divisible by one-hundred. Century years also have to be divisible by four hundred. 1900 didn’t make it. 2000 did. Enough math. How did this happen? A day is measured by how many days it takes the Earth to circle the sun. It’s a little more than the 365 days. It’s really 365.2421 days. The Roman Emperor Julius Caesar started leap year by adding an extra day every four years. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII made some tweaks to work in Christian holidays. So the Gregorian Calendar is the one we have today.

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