At dawn the telephone rings, "Hello Señor Rod? This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house." "Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?"

Two brooms were hanging in the closet and after a while they got to know each other so well they decided to get married.

Anyone who’s had the pleasure of knowing Tom Dunkel knows he’s an adept and fair observer of unique Americana who readily turns phrases that do his subjects justice. His book "Color Blind: The Forgotten Team that Broke Baseball’s Color Line," about a Depression-era integrated semi-pro baseball team out of North Dakota, is regarded as a top-tier sports book deftly matching cultural insight with entertainment.

If you’re the Yes Men, you meet NRA lunacy head on with the ludicrous. If you don’t know the Yes Men, Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, from their prior projects beginning in 1996, don’t take no for an answer. They’ve just released a twenty minute film on YouTube that underscores how the NRA’s steam is generated by fear rooted in racism.

Costa-Gavras’ Z predisposes one to admire it, as the first film to indict the brutal military regime in Greece; in fact, the music by the long-imprisoned Mikis Theodorakis had to be smuggled out of the country. From the bitter opening title card (“Any similarity to actual events, or persons living or dead is not coincidental. It is intentional”) our sympathies are engaged.

My wife has these days when she wants us to "talk about things." We were discussing aspects of our future so when it was my turn I asked her, "What will you do if I die before you?"

Here’s Where We’ve Met Him Before – And What It Tells Us About The Swamp Birds of a feather. Ever notice the gravitational pull that brings sleaze together in the legal world, how those of similar ilk find each other? Sure, everyone’s entitled to a defense, but too often the ethics of high profile, highly connected power clients dovetail with …

The Graham-Cassidy attempt to hamstring the health care of millions– the latest fruit of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s eternal gift to democracy, the Citizens United accelerant of bribery– has flamed out. But the donors to bought-and-paid for members of Congress will not go quietly, not when their congressional minions have their tin cups out. Increasingly desperate to fill campaign coffers, the minions …

Most recent plaudits for John McCain focus on flashes of character on his campaign trail when he condemned crazed birther and racist attacks on candidate Obama. I’d like to jump in the Way-back and travel to when McCain earned a “maverick” label. Give Senator McCain praise for his early efforts at campaign finance reform, done across the aisle with then-Senator Russ Feingold. It was …

Increasingly, an American abroad is an American ashamed. Recently I visited Berlin and Warsaw – the former an established European capital, the latter lesser-known but equally sophisticated.  It was an opportunity to relax, speak grammatically incorrect German, devour pierogies by the dozen. But more than anything, it was a welcome respite from the nonstop circus American politics has become.  I …