In my opinion

Does the GOP really want a return to the buggy-whip economy?

George Wallace, when he made a third-party run for the presidency in 1968, acidly observed that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. And as everyone can tell you, a dime ain’t what it used to be. The way Mitt Romney’s Republican rivals savaged him last week proves that the difference is something under two cents.

Correction

A column by Glenn Garvin on Dec. 20 stated that the National Science Foundation “funded a study on Jell-o wrestling at the South Pole.” That is incorrect. The event took place during off-duty hours without NSF permission and did not involve taxpayer funds.

In my opinion

Great moments in history? Not so much

I knew 2011 was going to be one of those years when I wrote a column saying that $80 billion of proposed federal bailout money to the U.S. Postal Service was a useless subsidy to “a dying ink-on-paper technology in an electronic world.” I got more than 100 bitter complaints from postal workers . . . every single one of them delivered by e-mail.

In my opinion

In war on drugs, dissent ‘unpatriotic’

I owe Kyle Vogt an apology. A former military policeman, he’s now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a group of former cops, prosecutors and judges that supports ending the war on drugs.

Glenn Garvin

Giving bullies a veto on the First Amendment

Imagine five Jewish kids go to school one day wearing their yarmulkes. The school’s numerous skinhead students are furious. At lunch they mill around in the school yard, muttering threats and complaining to the assistant principal that that their political beliefs have been insulted. The assistant principal responds by calling the Jewish kids into his office and ordering them to take off their yarmulkes or go home.