On our way to one of our annual church convocations, my wife and I realized one of my lifelong dreams by visiting Springfield, IL – state capitol and home of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Going well back into my earliest school years, Lincoln has been of keen interest to me. For one reason, I grew up on Lincoln Place in my home town. For another, my mother was born and raised in Illinois, "The Land of Lincoln." Since this is the bicentennial year of his birth, I had even more reason to make a special effort to visit his hometown.

To encourage Congress to pass the "Elder Justice Act," a video documentary chronicling elder abuse was shown on October 19 on Capitol Hill.  Among other heart-wrenching accounts, the documentary told of Vicki Bastion, aged 92, of Hayward, California, who installed a security gate inside her home to protect her and her few remaining valuables from her grandson and his gang-related friends.

It was a gray, chilly morning with soft, intermittent rain falling, which cleared to a blustery, cold, sunny afternoon as we visited the ancient walled city of Chester in England. This place was settled by the Romans over 2000 years ago as an outpost in the British Isles.

So-called "animal rights activists" are aggressively promoting this incredibly dumb idea.  Carried out to the extreme, this cockamamie idea means to ascribe to animals the rights and privileges that human beings have.

“If it bleeds, it leads” seems to be the rule that newspapers, television and other news sources use today—and they have no shortage of heinous crimes and tragic occurrences to write about.

Rape, robbery, murder, extortion, corruption in political and business circles and other acts of crime and violence seem to permeate all strata of our society. Abductions, once rare, are now almost commonplace. And yet, our entertainment, in the form of television and movies, is filled with stories—some fictional, some true—of murder, mayhem and intrigue.