Well, it's a headline that should be showing up in the press, for several reasons. Most recently because of a revelation that has come out of the Norway tragedy. The headline reads: "Norway gunman touted lax US gun laws." (To read the story go to this link.)

Arguably, Norway has equally as much right to go to war with the US as we did with Afghanistan. We criticized them for harboring terrorists. We are arming the terrorist that attacked Norway. As a matter of fact, that is what we used as a justification for invading Iraq.

We are all ranting and cursing and hollering about our political leaders right now. Really, what is wrong with them? They can’t seem to get anything done! What a disgrace! How do these idiots keep getting reelected! Why can’t they be like the rest of us!

Well, an interesting reality is that comparing the demographics of the Congress to the demographics of the people will show that the Congress is not really much of a representation of the people at all. The proportions of race, gender, net worth and even religion are completely inconsistent with the people, as a whole. However, I would say that they actually represent us almost perfectly. You may be scratching your head and wondering how I am making that assertion. Well, I’ll explain that.

When I first opened up a Facebook account, I had a lot of fun connecting with other cartoonists and artists from around the country. I discovered a lot of cartoonists whose work I had never seen before, wonderful cartoons in local regional newspapers across the country. One of my favorite cartoonists who I met on Facebook is David Cohen. David Cohen was born in New York City, but has lived the last 40 years or so in Asheville, North Carolina- a liberal oasis in the Bible Belt.

His cartoons currently appear in the Asheville Citizen-Times, a Gannett owned daily. David is also a drummer/percussionist, and has played with a number of groups, including a seven year stint with 4-time Grammy winner David Holt and his band, the Lightning Bolts. He is currently playing with a Johnny Cash tribute band. David has a Facebook page to showcase his cartoons with a link here.

I decided to do an interview with him for Everyday Citizen. Here is the interview.

On this day, July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. This morning as I sat on my porch enjoying the early morning breeze before the heat sent me indoors, I could see a half moon hanging in the otherwise clear blue Kansas sky and I thought of that day so long ago, a day I remembered in a poem.

Early this morning, the last NASA shuttle landed. As a Star Trek fan from the beginning and as one who loved the space program, I feel the loss about the end of the program. The poem has relevance in many ways to what happened and is happening on July 21.

This idea of Mitch McConnell's that the President alone should make the call as regards the debt ceiling is very interesting and more than a little manipulative. He is a step ahead of his GOP detractors. He knows that the debt ceiling must be raised, but doesn't want the GOP imprimatur on it. His plan is they can go for bragging rights later - "WE didn't elevate the debt ceiling," as if it were a credit line or something.

The debt limit is not permission, some sort of credit line for the future. It simply says you will pay your bills up to such and such a limit. Given the Fourteenth amendment, we shouldn't have to vote on this at all. "Our national debt shall not be questioned." This is not to say the budget should not be balanced right along.

But if the President has to act because congress as a whole falls for this, the story will be that the President should be the most hated man by all because he alone is driving our country into debt. Nothing could be further from the truth. The borrowed money has already been spent.

The President didn't get us into this mess. The debt is largely due to money borrowed for unpaid war expenses.

This past week, the Brownback administration in Kansas announced they would be redistributing money ear-marked for Planned Parenthood Women's and Family Planning Services (PP) to a large medical center in the eastern part of the state and also to an un-named clinic in Ellis County ... presumably their nod to all of western Kansas.

A family planning clinic in Ellis County ... really? I've lived in Ellis county for 34 years and am not aware there is any clinic but PP. Neither is anyone else aware among those I've asked, so they must not be getting many referrals.

So WHICH clinic is getting the tax payer money? Just where is this money going? Who will benefit? What services are being underwritten? Do they compare with those now offered by PP?

Gail Collins took on a monumental task when she set out to write When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, published in 2010, with an updated appendix. Collins is the former editorials editor of The New York Times and writes a column for the Times op-ed page. Her method of detailing the history of the second wave of the feminist movement is to include personal anecdotes of individual women with the historical events that marked and shaped their lives. The personal anecdotes based on interviews with hundreds of women make the book readable and entertaining.

As a person who came of age in the '60s and who felt the exhilaration of first, seeing the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement unfold, then secondly being a part of The Feminine Mystique generation, I not only had my memory jogged as I read this book, I relived some of the events that took place during those years. Many women of my generation woke up to the realization that they didn't have to follow the traditional path that their mothers and grandmothers had trod. Rather they had choices that included activism but did not necessarily have to include having sex with and making coffee for the men in the anti-war and Civil Rights movements.