Anchor Babies in Arizona

Sometimes when I feel a great need to write about a burning issue of the day, and I'm still thrashing about for the words that will best express my thoughts, I open up my morning paper and find that Leonard Pitts has nailed it.

Today's bull's-eye was on immigration. So I'll just hush and give you a link to Leonard's column.

My Opinion on Abortion

It’s complicated.

I don’t think abortion is a good thing. I can’t imagine, really, that anyone would. About the best thing I can say about it is that under certain conditions, it may be a lesser evil.

I know there are plenty of Americans who would disagree with that. Who think nothing could be more evil than terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Some of those people are my friends and relatives.

I take back what I said at the beginning of this post. Actually, I can state my opinion in very simple terms:

In a perfect world, there wouldn't be any unwanted pregnancies.

...and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The Mentally Ill Among Us

Okay, maybe it isn’t fair to blame the Tucson shootings on Sarah Palin’s cross-hairs map.  Or the weapons-and-combat imagery in the campaign ads of Jesse Kelly, who tried to unseat Gabrielle Giffords in last year’s Congressional election.

Don’t get me wrong. I deplore the hateful rhetoric, the name-calling, the demonizing of anyone who sees things differently, that dominates our politics today. We could all stand to tone it down. But I’m not sure it would have made a difference in this case.

A Decade Remembered

The 21st Century isn’t a new thing any more. As of today, we’re into its second decade. The first decade swooped in and took off again before we came to any real consensus on what to call it. The Aughties? The Naughties? The Zeroes?

Maybe it’s appropriate that we haven’t come up with a name. It’s been a pretty uncertain decade.