Columnists

So far, the Republican-controlled 114th Congress has attacked women’s reproductive rights and savaged undocumented immigrants. Now they want to bully the Administration into attacking Iran. -more-

Almost before the votes were counted in the recent Greek elections, battle lines were being drawn all over Europe. While Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected Prime Minister from Greece’s victorious Syriza Party, was telling voters, “Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, fear and autocratic government,” Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, was warning the new government not to “make promises it cannot keep and the country cannot afford.”

On Feb. 12 those two points of view will collide when European Union (EU) heads of state gather in Brussels. Whether the storm blowing out of Southern Europe proves an irresistible force, or the European Council an immovable object, is not clear, but whatever the outcome, the continent is not likely to be the same after that meeting. -more-

The far-left anti-austerity Syriza Party has agreed to a coalition deal with the Independent Greeks giving the Syriza Party a majority and thus power in Greece.

Greece had slipped into near bankruptcy primarily because of widespread tax evasion and corruption. The "brutal austerity" imposed on Greece as a condition of $273 billion in Eurozone bailouts since 2010 has actually been working slowly but surely. The economy has been growing and unemployment is down.

On January 26, the Eurogroup began discussing an extension to Greece’s bailout -- which expires on February 28 -- but the Greek government must formally ask for an extension. However, on January 30, Greece's new Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said that Greece's government will not cooperate with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund mission bankrolling the country and will not seek an extension to the bailout program. This sets up a confrontation between the Eurozone and Greece. -more-

January marked the 70 anniversary of of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We have seen newsreels of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps at the end of WW II and a number of movies depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. However, newsreels and movies did not really prepare us for an actual visit to the site of the largest mass murder in history. As many as 1.5 million were murdered at Auschwitz, mainly Polish Jews, but also Soviet prisoners-of-war, Gypsies, Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Austrians, and Germans. -more-

We have a gradual nationwide trend in which laws are being made to restrict or prohibit tobacco use, and other legislation is passing that makes marijuana legal and accessible. These are both addictive substances (especially considering the greatly increased potency of today's pot) and it seems paradoxical that this reversal is taking place. -more-