I’ve known some great youth pastors but yep, the position does attract a lot of harmful people: people who deliberately seek out a youth position to predate on children and also people who are immature and just want to be “one of the kids,” which often leads to inappropriate boundary-crossing.

A dear friend of mine died in a terrible accident a few years ago. A truly lovely, funny person, a caring teacher and devoted mother to three young children. It just felt so wrong that she had been taken - it still does. After we heard the news, a mutual friend sobbed angrily, “And TED NUGENT’S still alive!!” Which…

All the Trumps seem to think that if they say/tweet it, it’s true. No need to check facts or even cite biased sources. And sadly, a whole lot of Americans apparently agree.

For me it wasn’t depressing at all. It gave me the same feeling I had at the deaths of my grandparents, all of whom lived long, full lives and weren’t afraid to go: a feeling of sadness but also a profound peace and a sense of rightness. It was time for them to move on, to make room for the next generations. And my…

That would be my ideal afterlife. Who wants to live forever? In fact, I found myself in tears because I loved, so much, the idea of everyone getting to exist until they decide they’re ready not to exist. So much of our fear and grief about death is because it can come so unexpectedly and often much too soon. How…

I was OK until Chidi’s speech about the wave. Then I was a goner.

Well, they’ve had a lot of practice planning decades-long cons, what with identifying the infant Obama as their preferred future president and carefully forging papers, contemporaneous accounts, etc., to hide the fact that he was born in Kenya. I always thought that showed remarkable insight. I mean, they just looked…

Oh Lord, you’re right. That does rather suggest a different meaning. Ha!

I don’t see that it’s an elitism issue - if I owned a helicopter, I might use it to beat the L.A. traffic too! I do think, though, that it raises the issue of safety issues being ignored when the client is rich and famous. Even if Bryant didn’t insist on the flight going forward in the fog, I would expect the pilot…

An evangelical preacher is a regular columnist in our local paper. I don’t generally agree with him, but he has a thoughtful take on many issues. He wrote a real barn-burner of a column once about the “prosperity gospel,” saying that when his first wife was diagnosed with cancer, a lot of people in their church…

Yeah, what does she even mean by “standing against” the animal kingdom? I’m seriously asking.

I quit drinking three years ago (it was just a coincidence that it happened soon after the 2016 election). Since then I’m not sure whether my sobriety has been a curse (“Guess I picked the wrong administration to stop sniffin’ glue!”) or a blessing. Probably a blessing, because my drinking was pretty bad to begin…

The problem is that in many countries (including the U.S. right now), the smart people are not in charge of making the laws. And no matter how many smart, educated people shout from the rooftops that this is an existential emergency, it won’t do a damn bit of good if we keep voting the craven, greedy, and idiotic into…

A lot of guys are deadbeat dads, and if this dude just didn’t want to be a father, I’m sure he knew that option was open to him.

That word “progressive” in Harry and Meghan’s post is absolutely incendiary, implying as it does that the rest of the royal family is regressive. Which is 100% true. The RF have apparently spent years trying to keep Andrew’s crimes under wraps, but they won’t do anything to change the disgusting tabloids’ access to…

“What do you mean, they don’t make butts of Malmsey anymore?”

Cue outrage from all the people who hold the simultaneous belief that (a) Meghan is just a social climber who desperately wanted to be a princess and (b) Meghan is evilly maneuvering to get Harry out of the royal family.

He’ll guess an entirely wrong location, and then a few days later he’ll produce a map with that wrong location labeled “IRAN” in black Sharpie...

I always think of “Back to the Future,” when Marty tells Doc that Ronald Reagan is president in 1985. Doc cries, “Ronald Reagan, the ACTOR? Then who’s vice president, Jerry Lewis???”

Oh yes, John Hess. Friend of John Barron’s, isn’t he?