Did you see the 2008 comedy Marley and Me? Good story about a family and their dog. Lots of laughs, some language, a sad ending.

A couple of Mondays ago, I arrived by car in Selma, Ala., at about 8:30 p.m. The temperature on a local bank clock proclaimed that, as the sun was sinking in the distance, it was 100 degrees. One hundred degrees at 8:30 at night. I thought about going to the pool at the Jameson Inn where I was spending the night, but it was just too hot. I would have felt like a lobster going for his last bath.

There was symmetry in the news that barraged us one day last week — Michael Jackson, not to mention Farrah Fawcett, had died, and the governor of South Carolina had made a nitwit and a creep out of himself over a woman in Argentina.

This week marks the 33rd anniversary of the first and last raid of the Magnificent Seven. The midnight foray on Candi’s house is forever documented on the front pages of old yellowed newspapers tucked safely away in forgotten scrapbooks.

“How fevered is the man who cannot look

Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,

Who vexes all the leaves of his life’s book,

Why did the founders of our nation give us the Bill of Rights?

The answer is easy. They knew Congress could not be trusted with our God-given rights.

Visit December of 1998 with me, trying to get Dave gussied up for his role as father of the bride on new Year’s Day. And with Christmas as another excuse, I bought him a couple of neckties to go with his new gray suit.

“You are 10 times the writer I am!” John Adams declared to his friend from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, on June 11, 1776. Adams was persuading Jefferson to draft the 2nd Continental Congress’ statement of independence, and Jefferson tried to pass the job back to Adams before he reluctantly agreed.

I often wish we could declare our independence from the U.S. Congress, a body more obsessed with its own desires than the people it represents. Much like the top Wall Street executives, our members of Congress have a very shallow view of the future, not looking beyond their own personal enrichment.

Every one of us has a stake in the healthcare debates now raging in Washington. Let’s keep in mind a few points as the rhetoric flies and we make our own judgments on what is best for our families and for our nation.

A while back, my friend, Reita, called and began the conversation with a hasty apology.

Her brother had died unexpectedly so I had baked a cake and carried it over to the family.

A pastor once asked his congregation:
Dear fellow Christians — who worship the true and Triune God, the Holy Trinity: “What is God like? What would it be like to meet God, face to face?”

My oldest son Jason, now a lieutenant with the police department, was a sergeant at the time. As the department chaplain, I often attended roll call and then rode in the police cruiser with an officer. That night, I was there to ride with Jason.

The fourth weekend in June is upon us, and it’s long overdue. Because I’ve been recovering from shoulder surgery, I haven’t been able to climb up on my soapbox this entire year. Five months and 30 trips to physical therapy later, I’ve been rebuilt. Better than ever. Now, perched atop my soapbox once again, my arms are flailing and my back is arched.

A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as “conservatives” than as “liberals.” Yet Republicans have been clobbered by the Democrats in both the 2008 elections and the 2006 elections.

Some people have certain presumptions — for example, that government is better suited to handling problems than individuals or private entities. And then there are the accompanying assumptions that government, for those who have faith in its supposedly superior capabilities, will always produce the desired outcome.

Ward Connerly, former University of California regent, has an article, “Study, Study, Study — A Bad Career Move” in the June 2, 2009 edition of “Minding the Campus” (www.mindingthecampus.com) that should raise any decent American’s level of disgust for what’s routinely practiced at most of our universities.

This 4th of July will be my 60th. With each passing year, it seems, I grow more troubled at how little the average American knows, or seems to care, about the birth of our country celebrated on that holiday.

The citizens of Fayette County need a moment of introspection in order to figure out where they want the county to be in the next 10 years. The days of resting on our laurels are long gone.

When I interviewed at Clayton State University in the summer of 1994, the president of the university told me that higher education in Georgia was on the verge of a tremendous transformation. In the previous year, Georgia had instituted a scholarship program unlike any other in existence – the HOPE Scholarship. And its impact on higher education was as dramatic as he predicted.

Perhaps you’ve seen the t-shirt emblazoned with, “I Was A Millionaire Until Mom Gave Away My Baseball Card Collection.”

It says something – something good – for our town’s reputation that wildlife lives here alongside people, and thrives. Bird lovers keep their feathered friends fed and watered, and the word is out: We have peacocks strolling through our office complexes.

Some time ago a great website, www.alliance4lifemin.org, which I credit with all the following information, reminded me again of some very important data about the connection between our Christian faith and the start of our country. As we celebrate the Fourth of July, I ask that we not forget this wonderful connection!

Forty years have passed since the United States landed a man on the moon during the summer of 1969.

Forty years since astronaut Neil Armstrong dropped the three and a half feet from the bottom rung of the ladder on the lunar vehicle and planted the first footprints permanently in the dust of our closest neighbor.

It’s only money, we like to say, when we know we shouldn’t be pulling out our wallets, but ...

The “but” is a big one when it comes to health care reform: huge, immense, Himalayan. So big we’re not going to do it, I’ll bet you money.

It has been seven days since The Wife left me. I truly didn’t think I would survive even this long. The simplest tasks have become incredibly difficult.

Back when I was on the receiving end of racial discrimination, it was to me not simply a personal misfortune, or even the misfortune of a race. It was a moral outrage. But not everyone who went through such an experience sees it that way.

Not so long ago in a vastly different media environment there were such things as journalistic ethics. Reporters were prohibited from taking trips paid for by individuals or groups they might cover. They couldn’t accept money for speeches. And they surely could not accept money or gratuities in exchange for reporting on a story in which a corporation or individual might have an interest. Too much socializing with sources was also frowned upon.

“Live Free or Die” is the title of author and columnist Mark Steyn’s speech at Hillsdale College, reproduced in Imprimis (April 2009), a Hillsdale publication that’s free for the asking.

To truly appreciate the irony of this story, you must first know that my history with chickens is colorful and much ballyhooed to the point of being family legend. It has never been an easy relationship between me and those feathery foes of mine.