Volume 264 | No. 19

No More Room on the Vietnam Memorial? Add a New Wall!

To the Editor: How would you feel if your son, brother or father had been deployed to the Vietnam War and then tragically died, but his name is not honored on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall) in Washington, D.C.? The Pentagon says your loved one’s name is left off of The Wall because he had died outside of an arbitrarily designated “combat zone.’’ And how would you feel learning there are many men who also had died outside of this combat zone, but their names are honored on The Wall? There is a growing movement of veterans who lost a military brother, and families …

Read more

Calling Toody and Muldoon

Thirty-odd years ago I got a phone call out of the blue from Mike Cavanaugh, a retired Philadelphia policeman. I didn’t know him, but he had a four-year contract to write a book about the Civil War battle of the “Crater,” and the contract was barely 90 days away from the deadline. He had done all the research, but had written only half a page, and wanted to know if I would be interested in co-authoring the book with him. At the time I was writing the biography of the Union general who lost that battle, so it seemed like an easy transition, and a …

Read more

Sadists and Masochists

To the Editor: I got a good laugh today. A guy told me “The far right Republicans are evil and the lefty Democrats stink; we need politicians that are in between.” Well I see the Republicans as a form of sadists and yes, that makes the Democrats masochists. This might seem a strange view at first but don’t the Democrats lose so often and so painfully that by now its obvious they secretly want it. Before every kick in the teeth they get down on all fours and wail about the injustice the Republicans are going to commit, and then, like clockwork, another kick in …

Read more