Copyright 2020 Katie Kieffer. All rights reserved.
Aug
21
2017
By Katie Kieffer
Waiter! Bring ice water! We need to wake up our lethargic congressional leaders, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Paul Ryan. Because when they snooze, America loses.
How do these two knuckleheads keep getting elected? It might be better if we had elected two La-Z-Boy armchairs to office. Neutrality is better than betrayal. Continue reading
Aug
14
2017
By Katie Kieffer
You’re in second grade, enjoying summer vacation, when a neighbor boy comes out of nowhere and thrusts his fist—hard—into your stomach. For seconds, you gasp for air. He’s no foe. In fact, you would have called him a friend until about three seconds ago. What just happened?
Not all of us have been shell-shocked. But we’ve all had the air knocked out of us at some point. For me, it once happened in the way described above. (The little boy thought he was being funny, although his mother laughed at his joke by grounding him.) Well, last week, Google singlehandedly knocked the air out of all of us.
We’ve been Google-shocked. Continue reading
Aug
07
2017
By Katie Kieffer
Roman historian Titus Livius (Livy) would love the new World War II movie, Dunkirk, because Livy believed: “the study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind.”
Livy was not the only prominent Roman thinker to value historical studies. Marcus Tullius Cicero—one of Rome’s finest orators—concurred: “To not know what happened before one was born is to live as a child.” And America’s founding father James Madison agreed with the Romans, warning: “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” Continue reading
Aug
01
2017
By Katie Kieffer
American law and military tradition do not discriminate against transgenders—and transgenders hurt themselves by believing otherwise.
How is this possible, one could ask, when our President is preventing transgenders from openly serving in the military? Continue reading
Jul
26
2017
By Katie Kieffer
“I can hear someone out back and I, I’m not sure if she’s having sex or being raped,” Justine Damond told a Minneapolis, MN police dispatcher at 11:27 p.m. on July 15. Eight minutes passed. No squad car. She re-dialed 911.
Minutes earlier, Damond had been awakened from sleep by a female’s chilling scream. The sound was particularly startling in a neighborhood known for low crime and peaceful streets. After calling the police, Damond called her fiancé and said the sound seemed to be coming from a neighbor’s garage. Continue reading
Jul
10
2017
By Katie Kieffer
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won the Catholic vote. Bush, McCain and Romney failed to repeat Reagan’s feat, but 2016 exit polls show Donald Trump won the Catholic vote by 7%. If Trump and Reagan gained popularity among the faithful by being unafraid to mention God, so too the Catholic Church should be unafraid to speak the truth.
As in 1984, the Catholic Church has a historic opportunity to bring society closer to God in solidarity with the world’s most powerful political leader.
“We want God!” President Trump said last week in Warsaw, Poland. The crowd erupted into wild applause. Continue reading
Jun
25
2017
By Katie Kieffer
Ronald Reagan removed Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof as soon as he became president. Because Reagan understood the power of demonstrating that science is at the service of humans—not corporate interests and K Street lobbyists.
Like Reagan, one of President Trump’s first moves was undoing a far sillier executive action of his own puerile predecessor, Barack Obama. Specifically, Trump unraveled the Paris Climate Accord, which Obama unconstitutionally negotiated with the United Nations in Paris, France in December of 2015. Continue reading
Jun
19
2017
By Katie Kieffer
Blue flames are products of extreme heat but “green” flames are products of extreme environmentalism, as we saw last week when fire engulfed London’s Grenfell Tower.
From skyscrapers in London to wild lands in California’s Sun Valley, so-called green policies that disregard basic principles of fire safety are sparking deadly infernos. This issue deserves our attention far more than Russian hacking myths and fairytales. Continue reading
Jun
11
2017
By Katie Kieffer
Hillary Clinton once wished her dad a Happy Father’s Day by commemorating her mother. And likely not by accident. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton were raised by fathers who set poor examples—a reminder of the crucial role fathers play in raising society’s future leaders.
Certainly, Jackie Robinson is an example of a man who developed himself into an upstanding leader in spite of a deadbeat dad. (Robinson’s mother raised Jackie and his four siblings alone after their father abandoned them.) So, the point of today’s column is to encourage men to be great fathers—not that an imperfect father determines one’s future. Continue reading
Jun
05
2017
By Katie Kieffer
The average American child will spend 405 hours this summer watching TV and Internet videos: Be a great example and read. Reading is proven to make us healthier, happier and wiser. So grab a cold Corona (keeping this example to yourself, at least for now) and pick up a book!
One evening while staying at Sea World Orlando, I looked up from dinner to notice a family of four eating beside me. All four were peering at smartphones or tablets (including the children who both appeared to be under the age of six). Continue reading
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