In 2004, the CEO of the Massey Coal Company spent three million dollars of his own money to ensure the election of a member of the West Virginia Court of Appeals. It worked. The candidate, Brent Benjamin, was elected.
When it came time for the court to rule on a case involving the Massey company, Judge Benjamin participated in the decision, although he could have recused himself. The judges ruled in favor of Massey, but their decision was overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court.
Can a world-wide revolution take place, and we not know it? In the previous century, that actually happened before our very eyes.
We think of revolutions as involving soldiers in the streets and great turmoil in the cities. That’s what the takeover of the Russian government was like in 1917 when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar.
If, like me, you grew up Catholic long ago, you might well have hated England’s King Henry VIII for having taken his nation away from the Church of Rome in the sixteenth century. You probably would have backed the pope who refused to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, an action that ultimately led to the fateful division.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”
On a recent weekend evening, my wife Susan and I approached the door of the Dolphin, one of our favorite restaurants, only to find it held open for us by a young man accompanied by a young woman. They were ahead of us and, once inside, stood waiting, like us, for a table.
“Search for Escapee Continues.” This newspaper headline led into the story of a convict from Arizona who had fled prison and, as of this writing, has not yet been found. Driving with a woman believed to be his accomplice the man has continued successfully to elude police.
Like the headline writer and most other people, you may find no problem with the sentence that introduces the story. I do, however, because I believe the word escapee to be misused.
William Powers, author of the new book Hamlet’s Blackberry, is a journalist who lives and works on Cape Cod. He and his wife, both writers, are used to working at home.
Powers values his computer and the technology he uses. Like so many other writers, he relies on a panoply of electronic devices.
Some time ago, however, he and his wife realized that their communication technology, with all the possibilities it offered, was taking over their family life. Their young son was shortchanged in the process because his parents were less available to him than they wanted to be.