John T. Reed’s news blog

Not being able to see the forest for the trees is an old description of a common diagnostic problem. It applies to the Middle East. . Donald Trump CAN see the forest and not be distracted by the trees. I keep trying to get readers to do the same. Forget ISIS and Assad and Putin and the Ayatollahs and all that. Just look at the general situation there since, say, about 1750. . Islam divided into multiple sects that hate each other is the basic permanent underlying theme. Oil was overlaid on that in the 1970s. Peak political power of...

Lynching" to me has always been a staple of cowboy movies. It is about angry white mobs wanting to execute a white person without waiting for a trial. The vast majority of the targets of the lynchings in those cowboy dramas were white cowboys..Now, we learn, blacks “own the copyright on the word lynching” and only they can use it. Bull! It refers to angry mobs denying an accused due process, namely a trial. Historical lynchings in America were a fixture of a primitive, sparsely-populated nation with traveling circuit-riding judges whose intermittent availability delayed trials..Blacks were lynched, but so were...

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has a WSJ op-ed today where hs says to only believe the media facts when both liberal and conservative outlets same the same and even to wait a week when they DO agree on a fact..We can do better than that. During my litigator career, I once read a book titled The Evidence Never Lies. The more accurate title would be The [forensic or physical] Evidence Never Lies..Well, you’d better examine it carefully. Remember CBS anchor Dan Rather revealing damning documents about George W. Bush. One was a letter purportedly from an Air National Guard commanding...

Opioids kill pain and apparently are enjoyable to many. I have never used them much and never overused them, but I found they may me feel groggy and sleepy which I did not think was enjoyable..The following was once said about heroin..Beginning is euphoric, continuing is disaster, and quitting is impossible..But I come to you today not to comment on opioids, but rather to note the enormous similarities between opioid use and addiction and consequences of Trump hatred..Trump hatred is apparently great fun for many. They are gleeful, euphoric when they engage in it. “We’re gonna impeach the MFer,” said...

Intermarriage is erasing race. Calling someone just black or white or Asian or whatever becomes more inaccurate with each decade. . For example, today's WSJ has its reporters Joshua Jamerson and Tarini Parti making the flat statement the Kamela Harris "is black." She is also described as African-American. . In fact, by NATURE, she is about 45% African, 50% Tamil, and 5% Caucasian. By NURTURE, she was raised by a single-Tamil mom in Berkeley, CA and Montreal, Canada. Both of her parents are tenured professors are top universities (Stanford and McGill). . I have noted that African-American military brats (children...