Clinton's most feared opponent?
In last week's Republican presidential debate, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio talked about how early in his marriage he had to explain to his "wife why someone named Sallie Mae was taking $1,000 out of our bank account every month."
Such an act, according to a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC, is "offensive" and an example of mansplaining, or speaking condescendingly toward women.
Rubio, of course, was only letting his wife know his student loan would be automatically withdrawn monthly from their checking account.
Ironically, the super PAC, Priorities Inc., was founded by two alumni of President Obama's presidential campaigns. In that first campaign primary in 2008, Clinton and her surrogates accused the Obama team of sexism, and last year she revealed she had been asked by the Obama team to attack 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin because of her gender.
Sadly, the shoe is now on Mrs. Clinton's foot and seems to fit well.
Bland justice
Once more, police dashcam video has disproven a charge of racism. In this case, Dorothy Bland, dean of the journalism school at the University of North Texas, claimed she was walking while black - and in a hoodie - in her upscale Corinth, Texas, neighborhood.
Lo and behold, she said in a Dallas Morning News column, "flashing lights and sirens from a police vehicle" stopped her, and she was being asked where she lived and for her identification.
"To those officers," Brown wrote, "my education or property-owner status didn't matter." She "was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood."
"For safety's sake," she used her phone to take a photo of the officers and their patrol car's license plate, as Bland didn't want to end up like "the dozens of others who have died while in police custody." She then spread the news on Facebook, insisted "we must stop racial profiling" and even stopped by the mayor's house to ask if she looked like a criminal.
When Corinth Police Chief Debra Walthall learned of the incident, she checked it out and learned the truth. The officers had passed the woman earlier but had no reason to stop her. Later, when she crossed their path again, she was walking in the street with earbuds and "unaware that there was a pickup truck directly behind her that had to almost come to a complete stop to avoid hitting her."
The officers, she said, did flash their lights but did not activate the siren. In their conversation, they "immediately" told Bland about their concern for her safety and that she should walk against traffic.
"I am surprised by her comments as this was not a confrontational encounter but a display of professionalism and genuine concern for her safety," Walthall said. "The citizens of Corinth as a whole are a highly educated population, and it is disappointing that one of our residents would attempt to make this a racial issue when clearly it is not."
As of late last week, the chief was still waiting for an apology from Bland.
A little off
The difficulty for America to wrap its head around the problem with guns in the country may often be tied to the erroneous information thrown around by the gun control crowd. When average Americans who are wary of guns but support the Second Amendment learn about exaggerated facts and figures, they begin to wonder just what can be believed.
CNN commentator Sally Kohn added to that misinformation last week in a published opinion column when she claimed guns needed to be regulated like "toys" because 10,000 children are killed by them every year.
Not long after her column was posted, radio host John Cardillo called her out and provided her with 2014 FBI crime statistics.
Turns out, only 1,085 children under 18 were killed - though 1,085 too many - of 11,961 total homicides.
Kohn later corrected her column to show than 10,000 kids were killed or injured by guns.
You did what?
How dare you do something so atrocious as to carve a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween?
Just in time for last Saturday's scary holiday, the U.S. Energy Department said your pumpkins are responsible for unleashing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Indeed, according to information on the department's website, 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins will end up becoming part of the "more than 254 million tons of municipal solid waste produced in the United States every year."
Municipal solid waste, in turn, decomposes into methane, "a harmful greenhouse gas" that has "more than 20 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide" and, of course, "plays a part in climate change."
The Energy Department, it says, has partnered with industry to develop and test two integrated biorefineries, which are capable of converting plant and waste material into biofuels, biopower and other products. But, alas, they're not operational yet.
So, with 363 days notice, don't dare pick out a pumpkin in 2016, enjoy some family time while deciding on a face for the orange fruit or put a candle in it and have it glowing when you greet trick or treaters. You wouldn't want to be contributing to climate change, would you?