I couldn’t stomach Jimmy Carter–until my view of him turned around 180 degrees just four years ago.  

Like most Democrats who supported Ted Kennedy’s run against him, I tagged Carter as just some grinning anti-New Deal Bible-thumping goober. And his post-Presidential “peacemaking” was often dangerously naïve, as I saw in Liberia where Carter had boosted the presidential candidacy of war-criminal Charles Taylor for president because Taylor, a murderous monster, proclaimed he’d been born again in Jesus.

I nick-named Carter, “The Dangerous Christian.”

But then, while staking out the current Governor, the vote-suppressing racist Brian Kemp, I did a little re-con outside Kemp’s office. I had my face to the wall, pretending to study the official portraits of the State's governors.  I was struck that only one, James Earl Carter, refused to have his photo taken with his own state flag fully visible because it included the Confederate flag's Stars and Bars. In Georgia, at that time, 1971, that took immeasurable courage.  That took integrity.  

Alav ha-Shalom, President Carter.

This article first appeared on the Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio and the United States have a big problem with infant mortality. But the state government can take measures to significantly lessen it, the vast majority of Ohio economists surveyed on the matter said.

When infants die at high rates, it isn’t just a tragedy for them and their families. It also is expensive and it saps economic growth, a group of researchers reported last year in the peer-reviewed Cureus Journal of Medical Science. 

It’s been three days since Luigi Mangione’s manifesto was discovered in his backpack explaining why he assassinated the CEO of United HealthCare.

In Mangione’s manifesto, he said that he was not the “most qualified person to lay out the full argument” against our for-profit healthcare industry. Apparently, to Mangione, one of those qualified people — is me. In his manifesto, he references how I’ve “illuminated the corruption and greed,” implying folks should go to my work to understand the complexity — and the power-hungry abuse — within our current system.

It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer. And thus, my phone has been ringing off the hook which is bad news because my phone doesn’t have a hook. Emails are pouring in. Text messages. Requests from many in the media. The messages all sound something like this: 

“Luigi mentioned you in his manifesto. That people should listen to you. Will you come on our show, or talk to our reporter and tell them that you condemn murder!?”

Today, January 1st, 2025, is the first day in the new life of the Octagon in Newark (Ohio) as it opens to full public access after being besieged by a golf course over the previous century.

This Native American-built geometric structure, which has an adjoined circle with an observation mound, is arguably Ohio’s second most popular and mysterious First Nation earthwork when compared to Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio. Fascinating is how the Octagon, believed to be a ceremonial pilgrimage site used hundreds if not thousands of years ago, aligns with the northernmost moonrise which occurs every 18.6 years, and 2024 was that year.

Back in October at the Octagon during a public event on a night when the moon aligned nearly perfect with the Octagon (pictured above), the Ohio History Connection’s Dr. Bradley Lepper told the crowd those Native Americans who built and celebrated the Octagon did so to connect to the “rhythm of the cosmos so they would not feel alone.”