Walter Cronkite, when asked whether he agreed that liberals dominated the major news media, told me, “Yes — if by liberal you mean open-minded.”

I'm continuing my quest to uncover as much as I can about the various Owen and Owens families in our area, taking first the family of Brice Marshall Owen and his wife, Sarah Law (or Lane) who married in 1812 in Jasper County, moved to Clarke County, Ga. by 1820, and who were in Meriwether County by 1840. Try as I might, I could not find Brice anywhere in Georgia in 1830.

If one presses me for a favorite professional football team, I’d have to say the Green Bay Packers. That might seem strange for a guy who grew up a Southerner cheering for the Volunteers of Tennessee and basically believing that Heaven started south of the Mason-Dixon Line. But, the Packers it is.

Politicians tend to get serious when the economy turns suddenly and snarls. Well, semi-serious — which isn’t bad for people whose livelihood depends on saying things intended mostly to leave an impression.

Dad was really mad this time. He sat all of us down on the snow-covered curb in front of our house at 110 Flamingo Street. We were in big trouble, but I must admit it had been really a cool thing to see.

Most of the horrors of the 20th century — of which there were many — would not have been possible without demagoguery or misleading propaganda.

Our Jean lives in northern Virginia and is good to keep in touch regularly. This week she copied me with reports she has contracted to send NOAA concerning whatever weather was happening in her backyard. Snow!

In the ‘90s, Judicial Watch, an organization that seeks to hold Democrats and Republicans accountable to the law, pursued members of the Clinton administration. Larry Klayman, the organization’s founder, filed several lawsuits to expose alleged cover-ups in Commerce Department trade missions and the suicide of White House aide Vincent Foster.

According to recent intelligence reports, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed 40 Hamas terrorists in Gaza this past December without inflicting a single civilian casualty.

rdine can that is a train.

That’s why, once one neglects to make a timely reservation on any of the popular 30-minute, $40 road shuttle services between San Francisco and San Jose, the $7.50 Caltrain ticket becomes an enticing option. Once.

Dixie Dew and I went away for the weekend to visit our friends, Stevie and Darrell in Nashville. It was actually Dew’s invitation but I was allowed to tag along.

This year has gotten off to a bizarre start on some fronts. Along with the grisly Gary Hilton alleged murders, several weird events have made the news.

Is everybody O.K.? Did you have enough bread and milk to last you the night on Saturday?

Whew, that was some batch of flurries.

The nasty bickering on the subject of race between Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got me thinking about the true legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I’m writing to you on behalf of my son. In the simplest form, what are the main differences between today’s Democrats and Republicans? I get too complicated with my explanations. I don’t think these kids really know the difference and just vote for a candidate because he is young, or female, etc. Can you help?”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With Barack Obama nipping at her heels in Iowa, Hillary Clinton went on the state’s public television Dec. 14 to say: “I’ve been vetted. ... There are no surprises.”

Some GOP conservatives worry that a President Mike Huckabee would be like George W. Bush in domestic policy, not using his constitutional power to restrain government spending; and like Jimmy Carter in foreign policy, not using military power to restrain anti-American forces.

Close your eyes and try to imagine what the news room of The Citizen looks like. Don’t get scared. We won’t let Ben bite.

My sister, Kay, and I attended an estate sale in Pike County, a few weeks ago, which involved the descendants of the Owen family. This family (I learned after doing a little research) was in Meriwether County before Pike, and In Wilkes and Jasper counties before that. Since Martin Owen(s) of Upson and Meriwether was my ancestor and he has been my brick wall for years, this event held more than just a mild interest for me. I have long wondered if Martin was connected to the other Owen/Owens families in this area. My sister also was very interested since Bricy Owen, a relative of the family who was having the sale, was buried in the Hollonville Cemetery, just a few hundred yards from her home. Could he be one of our distant relatives?

“Virtue” is a word not heard much anymore. One definition of the word is “any admirable quality or attribute; ‘work of great merit.’” If there is any one virtue that is greater than the others, that virtue would, in my opinion, be “humility.”

I need a man. A man who can say “No.” A man who rejects Big Nanny government. A man who thinks being president doesn’t mean playing Santa Claus. A man who won’t panic in the face of economic pain. A man who won’t succumb to media-driven sob stories.

So, why not a woman for president? Why not a black? Why not a sclerotic, left-handed tin-typist from Fargo, N.D. — so long as the individual in question served our national purposes while displaying the all-too-rare attributes of intelligence, judgment, decisiveness and patriotism?

Men have been hunters and gathers since the dawn of time so it should come as no surprise that around tax time, we find we have gathered way too much stuff.

It was front-page news on the Jan. 14 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle that blacks by the tens of thousands have left the San Francisco Bay area since the 1990 census.

I’ve got to hand it to Barack Obama. His team managed to take mangled words from Bill and Hillary Clinton and create an explosive racial divide just in time for some major Southern primaries. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

For latecomers, our daughter Mary has lived in Germany since 1984; she is a pianist who has worked for several opera houses but now is with the Mannheim Opera Company. She lives an interesting life, to say the least.

During his recent trip to Israel, President Bush visited several places that re-affirmed his faith, including Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee. Then exhibiting far greater faith than believing Jesus could walk on water, he asserted that “peace” could be had between Israel, the Palestinians and her Arab neighbors.

If a woman is truly fortunate, she will know two distinct dating periods in her life. The first will be when she is deemed mature enough and interesting enough to date older men. The second will come when she is declared fun enough and sexy enough to date younger men.

My computer-illiterate husband called me from work the other day. It seems that one of his co-workers got an email warning about a new virus hitting computers everywhere. His co-worker insisted that it was truth and my husband called me to warn me about it.

Come November, voters in several states will not only be picking the next president but deciding whether they want to end a system of racial preferences in public higher education and government hiring and contracting.