Bilbo's Random Thought Collection

Just shy of eight years ago, in July of 2017, I wrote a post called " Talismanic Incantations ." The theme of the post was that th...

In the era of Der Furor, we find ourselves asking a lot of uncomfortable questions nobody ever thought would need to be asked, and the answe...

Those of you who have been with me for a while know that I spent my entire career working in the world of military intelligence, on active d...

Those of you who have been reading this blog for any length of time know that I take a dim view of those who loudly and irresponsibly trumpe...

If the average American doesn't know anything else about the Constitution, he (or she) knows two things: (1) the Second Amendment grants...

I wrote about the language of murder in this space a few days ago. Since the mass murder that took place in Virginia Beach last week, we ha...

This is going to be a little long and rambling, so bear with me. It's one of those topics I know will be loved and hated in equal measu...

There's been a huge surge recently in the recognition of the problem of sexual harassment, with many prominent persons (mostly men) in ...

One of the concepts with which most of us are acquainted in the age of Game of Thrones and Harry Potter is that of the magic spell, a set...

Today is Memorial Day, the traditional beginning of summer, the day the swimming pools open and everyone flocks to the beaches and the amus...

There was a minor stir last week when President Obama suggested that one way to help minimize the influence of big money donors on our elec...

Outside my study window, snow is falling heavily (as it has been since last night at about 8:00). It looks like we've got somewhere aro...

It seems that Congress has awakened, stretched, yawned, and decided that it's politically advantageous to take up immigration reform ag...

Tomorrow morning at 12:01AM, barring a sudden and unexpected rush of sanity and adult behavior, Congress (mainly the far-right wing of the ...

Do you mind if I philosophize for a moment? Of course you don't. Of course, it's my blog, so I'll do it anyway, but I thought...

Here in the United States, we treasure our freedoms. Our Constitution (well, actually, the Bill of Rights ) enshrines a long series of che...

It's no secret that we're living in an America that is very different from the one in which many of us grew up. Incivility and irra...