Topics for this week: "lost" blog; trial by jury; minimum wage; climate change; Donald Sterling; Nigeria, Boko Haram & women's education.

Lost blog. At some time this week I fat-fingered the keyboard and lost this week's edition. Retrieval efforts continue. In the meantime......

Amendments 4 & 6. The sometimes gadfly senator, Rand Paul (R, KY), raises an important point in his recent NYT Op-Ed piece. Can a senator be expected to give credible "advice and consent" on a presidential appointment without being privy to the selectee's consequential writings? Senator Paul thinks not. In this case, the concern is the life-time appointment of David J. Barron to the US Appeals Court for the First Circuit. As a Justice Department official, Mr. Barron wrote two opinions justifying the execution without a trial of an American citizen abroad, seemingly bypassing the constitutional guarantees of the 4th & 6th Amendments. Thus far President Obama has refused to share Mr. Barron's written opinions with the US Senate. Interesting!

Minimum wage. Can anyone honestly expect a wage earner in the US to live on $290.00/week? A single parent with one child? Even a two-parent, working family on $580.00/week? That is how much you earn (before taxes) working 40 hours/week at the current $7.25/hour minimum wage. That's assuming (1) your employer will give you a full-time schedule and (2) your employer is not stealing from your paycheck. If you doubt the latter point, there are more than few cases in court that charge employers with deliberately short-changing their employees.

Climate change. According to Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL), our climate is always changing, but human activity is not to blame. Really?? So, for Rubio the truth seems clear: Mother Earth and the heathen gods have turned against us!

Donald Sterling and the NBA. Much ado about nothing? Regarding Mr. Sterling, he is either a racist or, if not, the man desperately needs a 24-hour "minder."

Boko Haram, the Taliban, et.al.   See Nicholas Kristof's recent column, "What's so scary about smart girls?" for his take on why extremists find educated women a threat and why educating young girls is so very important. Kristof writes, "If you want to mire a nation in backwardness, manacle your daughters." John 8:7 reminds us, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Is America doing all that we can for our own daughters?