The end of a year, any year, is a good time to give some consideration to the reason we have arrived at a particular state of affairs and whether a new direction is required. This is particularly true at a time when the campaigns to be the party’s choice for the presidency is more drenched in debate of religious issues and assertions, than in domestic and foreign policy issues.

The religious views of President George W. Bush may have gotten us to where we are at this point and our national policies could do with far less of it and a far more dispassionate review of our history. Our greatest need is to literally protect and preserve the republic.

The United Nations conference in Bali, attended by some 10,000 participants and observers, is likely to make future generations conclude that ours was deranged to be discussing how humans could have any affect whatever on the climate. They will, in retrospect, agree that the global warming theory was a lie whose agenda was to retard anything that might extend and enhance life on earth.

A petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for a rare loon that breeds in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve has been accepted for review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted a May 29, 2007 Associated Press article. Conservationists hope an eventual listing of the yellow-billed loon will curb petroleum development in the 23-million acre reserve that covers much of Alaska's North Slope. 

The libraries of the world are filled with books devoted to history and new ones are published on any almost daily basis, but if their lessons are ignored, it condemns nations and the peoples of the world to horrors that increase with the evolving technology of death. 

A book that should be mandatory reading for all the current and aspiring leaders of the world is David A. Andelman’s “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.”