There has to come a time when you sit up, look around you, wipe off your face, then sigh and begin your life again. I could cite an endless list of things that can ruin your days…or even your life for years. 

They are so pretty, cascading out from the edge of the woods and flowing into the fields. Honeybees love them and gladly gather their yellow pollen. And so it seems that they do have some redeeming values. I, however, consider them my archenemy. 

It starts with a letter in the mail. A dairy farmer opens it to find new requirements from their milk processing plant. Herd data, energy usage, emissions figures. The letter calls it voluntary but if you don't comply, the plant can't take your milk. And if the plant can't take your milk, you're out of business.

Well, we may have been a few minutes north of Ivy Hill Drive as the chicken flies, but when you are a short-legged beagle like I am, that is not the case.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been chatting about the old Mosby Medicine Company of Cincinnati, mainly because ever since I was a youngster, I had an old medicine bottle from the company but never knew the history behind it – until many, many years later.

There was no call to vocation. No sense of citizenship. No demand for judgment, courage or responsibility. No acknowledgment that the students sitting in front of her are about to enter a world that will test them in specific and serious ways. Instead, the graduates become the backdrop for an institutional message about itself.

Private schools primarily serving low-income families qualify for the extra support, busting the myth that the tax credits help the “white and wealthy,” according to the foundation. Of the annual 101,751 scholarship recipients, 4 in 10 identify as non-white, which is on par with public school enrollment.

The statewide signature petition drive does not change anything in Ohio. If successful, it simply gives Ohio voters a voice if they prefer a different direction. It reminds me of the many times I covered county commission meetings in Highland and other counties. Almost without fail, when a county agency such as Children Services or another office approached commissioners for their "blessing" to place a levy or levy renewal on the ballot, commissioners acquiesced.

In my brief time in the Marines, they taught one lesson above all others: never let the enemy set the tempo. Trump has not. From the opening strikes on Feb. 28 straight through to today's blockade, Washington has held the initiative. That is not an accident.

Most of the dollars were accessed by Democratic-controlled states. New York alone reached $15.67 billion in Medicaid home-health spending by 2024 – roughly a third of the national total – through its Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, which allows beneficiaries to hire a relative as the paid caregiver.

For years, Americans were told to trust the experts, trust the agencies, trust the intelligence community, and trust the officials who assured us they were following the science. But the evidence before this Committee tells a very different story.

The decisive question for the United States is no longer whether the blueprint exists. It is whether America will recognize what it has produced — and demonstrate the strategic clarity, institutional resilience, and national unity required to secure its future — before the final stages complete themselves.

I want to say thank you to those who put on the badge. Thank you for your service, your sacrifice, and your bravery. America would not be the nation we know and love without you. 

No one had seen the new chief of staff squeeze his head with both hands in total frustration. No one knew when he abruptly shoved his office chair away from his desk and agitatedly leaped to his feet. And his office assistant was certainly not prepared when he stomped to her office and threw the door open so violently that it thudded against the wall. 

A dad approached me after the 2 p.m. Mass I celebrated at Children's Hospital last Sunday. He made an observation that perplexed him: "This Mass was so different than other Masses I attended."