Wallace G. Smith

The world held its breath last November 4 as the most powerful nation on earth elected its new president.  At the selection of Senator Barack Obama, there was much celebration, both in the U. S. and abroad.

The ongoing economic drama playing out in America is fascinating, but only in the way that one might find a train wreck fascinating.

If you are reading this commentary, it means that the world did not end on September 10, 2008.  Why that date?  It's the day that European Organization for Nuclear Research switched on the Large Hadron Collider under the border of France and Switzerland.

The news today generally fails to communicate the complexities of the current Georgia/Russia conflict. The U.S. has long supported Georgia's bid to hold on to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, when the people of those provinces consider themselves Russian.

Another September 11 anniversary has come and gone. It is a day when our country cannot help but recall the horrific attack we suffered seven years ago. As we all surrounded our television screens watching smoke pouring out of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in attacks that eventually cost some 3,000 lives, we came to the realization that something had changed.