Donald Kaul wrote columns for 50 years, beginning with a long stint at the Des Moines Register that made him a household name (in a good way) throughout Iowa. OtherWords distributed his columns from 2001 through July 2012, when he had a heart attack and declared that he needed either a temporary or permanent break. Kaul, who was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary in 1987 and 1999, lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can read more about his career in this column.
Eisenhower’s farewell address sounds like a speech not merely from another era but from another planet.
The Constitution, like Huckleberry Finn, is in many ways a reflection of its time.
Republicans want to rip the heart out of the future and bury it at the intersection of crumbling highways and a falling-down bridge to nowhere.
Life seldom imitates Clint Eastwood movies. Even when it does, you rarely get to be Clint.
Where else can a certifiable loony who looks like Charlie Manson’s creepy cousin walk into a gun store and buy a semi-automatic pistol that shoots 30 rounds in just a few seconds?
Wouldn’t be terrible if we had a great president and we didn’t notice?
Surely the greatest country on earth would have the leading educational system in the world, but we don’t.
The Republicans hit on the strategy of acting as though they’d won the 2008 elections.
Surely life’s unfairness doesn’t have to be rubbed in kids’ faces at Christmas.
Barack Obama has been replaced by a guy who makes Jimmy Carter look like Vince Lombardi.
Let’s make getting busted for marijuana possession like getting a speeding ticket.
I can’t understand how the Obama administration became so inarticulate.
No sane politician would vote for any of the changes the commission headed by Bowles and Simpson is recommending, unless he or she is planning to retire early.
Always vote, even if you have to hold your nose.
Voters responded to hard times by increasing the power of an avowed enemy of prosperity.
The Juan Williams debacle shows that flying-while-Muslim is the new driving-while-black.
A bad economy might make voters angry, but it shouldn’t make them crazy.
It’s beginning to look as though President Obama is going to be run over by the train that is the Angry American Voter.
I think anything we do is going to be too little, too late.
Republicans are promising to solve all our problems without cost or pain.