To the courageous Senator Lindsey Graham
Dear Senator Lindsey Graham, I write today to applaud your courage. Only a man like yourself–one worried that he might have to face a run-off in a primary election–would have the bravery to introduce...
Category: Humanity
Carry me home
Jason Shelton, an American soldier, was on my plane to Greenville last night. I hadn’t slept in two days. I’d left my hotel 22 hours before. My back and neck were knotted up. I...
Where there’s smoke…
This question, as all good questions do, begins with a cast iron skillet. My wife is-and this is putting it in a way only a loving and understanding husband can-security conscious. When I buried...
America loses
I stood in my kitchen. I was tenderizing chicken. Beating the holy hell out of it. Destroying it, really. I turned to my wife who sat at the counter with her laptop. I yelled....
One American’s flow chart
I am not an activist. I am not a revolutionary. I’m a dad of two American boys. *** Imagine this: somebody thinks you did something wrong. Let’s say it’s your old boss at Flaco’s...
Assigning freedom
You want your freedom, do you? I know you do, because you post about it on Facebook, and you talk about how the government better not come and try to take it from you....
Election Day 2012: Live from America’s Couch
2:48am–Before I go personal, let me offer this objective view of tonight’s election: Nate Silver and his 538 model are literally the most important thing to come out of tonight’s vote. You may not...
Vice Presidential Debate: Live from America’s Couch
Scroll down for updates throughout the night The fact that I’m doing this again speaks to one of two things. Either I have a criminally inflated sense of ego, or I was so disappointed...
First Presidential Debate: Live Blog from America’s Couch
Scroll down for updates I’ve got a great couch. It’s shaped like a U and stuffed with down. It sometimes pokes me in the hindquarters with actual feathers, which I’m sure probably qualifies me...
Second grade soldier
My son learned to roller skate less than 48 hours ago. He’d be ashamed to admit it, but there were tears at first, but then lots of skating. Twenty-four hours earlier, I took him...
Finish line
“I am as nervous as I’ve ever been.” That was my son this morning, up before the sun for his first youth triathlon. At eight years old, he would be among the youngest of...
Choir robes, $25,000 shrimp and grits, and the modern Presidency
I am a fallen believer in the power and will of a modern President. I should admit that from the start. I have no enemy in the office, and I have no friend. There...
Using John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck died in 1968, four years before the landmark Furman v. Georgia capital punishment decision by the United States Supreme Court. It was the first moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S....
On getting naked
I could not have been more naked. Six months ago, I stood behind an open car door. It was the only thing blocking my man-parts from an entire grass-field-turned-parking-lot full of people on a...