By Jeffrey Page

Who can forget the weird Todd Akin running for the Senate (loser) from Missouri as he declared during the never-ending debate on abortion: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

And who can forget Richard Mourdock, running for the Senate (loser) from Indiana with a new interpretation of the wishes of the Almighty: “. . . even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape…it is something that God intended to happen.” (Incidentally, I don’t think Mourdock ever answered the question: If a rape is intended by God, isn’t it a little presumptuous for ordinary humans to try the rapist in a criminal trial?)

Some candidates and office holders just never know to keep their mouths shut.

Nowadays, Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general of Virginia, is running for governor. Recently he came along with a position he held 10 years ago when he was in the state legislature. His bold initiative: It is time, he said, to reinstate the anti-sodomy laws, but he began with a false assumption.

“My view is that homosexual acts – not homosexuality, but homosexual acts – are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong,” he has said.

No question Cuccinelli can kiss the gay vote goodbye, but after that business about homosexual acts, he seems to forget that there’s another group of people out there who would be affected by enactment and enforcement of anti-sodomy laws. That would be the estimated 96 percent of the population who are not gay but who nevertheless might enjoy anal or oral sex.

Cuccinelli also conveniently forgets that 10 years ago, the Supreme Court found Texas’s anti-sodomy law unconstitutional because it deprived some people of their rights to such constitutional guarantees as equal protection and due process.

In another remarkable lapse of memory, he fails to remember that the Supreme Court ruled in 1965 that government cannot and must not intrude itself into the bedrooms of Americans. It ruled so while striking down a Connecticut law that forbade the use of contraceptives. That law violated an American “right to marital privacy,” the court said.

Speaking of Texas, one of its congressional representatives, Michael Burgess, says that abortion should be outlawed because boy fetuses like to masturbate.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?” Burgess said.

The question of an abortion’s inflicting pain on a fetus has been discussed for years but never proved one way or the other. And the question of whether those little in-utero guys manage to make themselves happy with a well-placed hand is just too bizarre.

And what of little girl fetuses? Surely their little hands occasionally wind up between their little legs, just like the little boys. Does that bring them a little pleasure? Or is Burgess telling us that girls are not part of his sexual pleasure-and-pain theorem?

Science is not on Burgess’ side. “We certainly can see a movement of a fetus during that time, but in terms of any knowledge about pleasure or pain – there are no data to assess,” Jeanne Conry, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told U.S. News and World Report.

So where does Burgess, who identifies himself as a “former” obstetrician and gynecologist, get his information? From watching X-rated sonograms?

By Jeffrey Page

We’re just the people. We go to a job or look for one. We pay the bills. We fight the wars. We die in those wars. We’ve come to understand that the only time politicians care what we think is when there’s an election. We’re all V.I.P.s around election time.

Nowadays we have special significance ever since word got out that all our telephone records are routinely made available for scrutiny by the National Security Agency. This, it is clear, could cost votes and shorten political careers so for a while we will be taken seriously.

But usually, we’re just the people. We voted for Obama the first time because, after eight years of Bush, he was like a fresh wind blowing in. We were a little less enthusiastic the second time. And now, five months into Obama’s second term, we find ourselves aligned with Michael Moore and the ACLU, also with Glenn Beck, Rand Paul, and Rush Limbaugh on the question of government snooping into our telephoning history.

We find something dangerous and suspicious about the NSA making notes on who we call on the phone, when we call, what numbers we call, how long we speak. Yes, but government isn’t listening in on the conversation, we’re told by the very same government. That’s supposed to reassure us. But you don’t believe it, do you? Nor do I. 

I’ve been thinking about the words of the great Ma Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath” as she tells the son she loves: “Why, Tom – us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people – we go on.”

I wonder if Ma Joad was just dead wrong, and that eventually them people – with their demands for lower taxes, with their specious argument that government should be run like a business (like Enron maybe?), and with their willy-nilly interpretation of the Bill of Rights – will win the war against us people. If us people lose that war, the nation will have been transformed into something unrecognizable.

As has been noted again and again, the framers could not have imagined the United States of the 21st Century. Maybe not, but it’s important to remember that the protections of the Fourth Amendment will live as long as people take the Bill of Rights seriously and do not allow it to become the plaything of those who see nothing amiss with keeping track of your telephoning.

The words of the Fourth Amendment are complicated only to the people who wish they did not exist: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Obama swore to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution and yet, as the ultimate the boss of the NSA, he seems to have done little or nothing to keep us protected from the big nose of government sniffing our affairs. It is not overly dramatic to suggest that never has the Fourth Amendment – and the rest of the Bill of Rights for that matter – been in greater jeopardy than now.

I’m 29 years late, but Happy New Year 1984 anyway.

By Jeffrey Page

The late Sen. Frank Lautenberg

Frank Lautenberg could be devastating if he thought he or his friends were being unfairly attacked. So in 2004, with John Kerry’s war record in Vietnam being torn apart by the Bush forces, it was the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey who was recognized on the floor of the Senate for remarks.

In that short talk, Lautenberg gave as good as Kerry was getting, and once again proved that if Democrats were smart, they’d search for some more pugnacious candidates like himself and stop being so damned polite.

Lautenberg referred to “chicken hawks,” a species he described as having an appetite for war but only if they could find someone else to fight it for them. Lautenberg was never one to speak quickly and then break for lunch. So he went on to identify Dick Cheney as “the lead chicken hawk.”

He continued: “We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others, but when it was their turn to serve, they were AWOL from courage.” His outrage extended to the shameless GOP trashing of Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a triple amputee from Vietnam, as somehow not strong enough on defense matters.

Calling the vice president of the United States a coward was a variation on the old Democrats-are-soft-on-defense drivel the Republicans had been spewing for years. Now it was in their faces. And they yelped that it was unfair.  

Lautenberg had the standing to make the case. He had spent four years in the Army during World War II while Cheney spent about the same amount of time getting his five deferments during Vietnam and while George W. Bush was finding himself a cozy place in the Texas Air National Guard.

President Obama would be in a much stronger position these days if he had a few more Lautenbergs to call on when his party, his supporters and himself are slimed by the Right. When Congressional Neanderthals play dirty, Democrats often seem quick to shrug their shoulders, look sincere, and announce to anyone who’s listening that they’re ready to work with the other side. They’ve yet to figure out that the other side has no interest whatever in working with them. Democrats ought to listen to tapes of Lautenberg when he was angry and stop being so characteristically courteous.

It isn’t just Lautenberg’s partisan mouth that will be missed. He was a passionate national politician.

–He led the struggle for a national drinking age of 21. For years, New Jersey teenagers drove across the state line to New York to drink. The Jersey drinking age was 21; New York’s was 18. There were comparable situations elsewhere. Using the possible loss of federal highway funds as a club, Lautenberg persuaded all the states to adopt that higher age.

–Lautenberg was an advocate of a national blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent. If your BAC is higher, the law presumes you’re drunk and incapable of driving safely. Again, no state could be forced to adopt the lower BAC. But neither are the feds required to write highway-aid checks to states that refuse to comply. Today, 50 states subscribe to the 0.08 level.

–He was a strong supporter of the Secaucus railroad station, a $500 million project in the Jersey Meadows that was designed to allow NJ Transit rail commuters to switch trains and ride into midtown Manhattan or to Newark instead of traveling to Hoboken and the PATH trains.

–Just two things about Secaucus. There was an early proposal to spend $200,000 on a statue of Lautenberg for the station, an idea thankfully laid to rest by then-Governor Jim McGreevey, a fellow Democrat. I checked the clips to be certain and could find no story suggesting that Lautenberg opposed the idea of a statue of himself. I think he kind of liked the idea. Anyway, he got the next best thing; the station’s official name is the Frank R. Lautenberg Secaucus Rail Station, but most people just call it “the transfer,” and wonder why it’s such a confusing place.

–It was Lautenberg who led the fight to outlaw smoking on most domestic passenger flights. Remember what it was like when smoke drifted from the smoking section to the nonsmoking section? Remember the headaches? Remember thinking how much you’d pay for a breath of fresh air? Remember the smell of your clothes?

He had other issues: One of his environmental measures requires manufacturers to inform local officials of the chemicals they have on hand and use. He supported gun control. His intervention sped up federal assistance to survivors of Hurricane Sandy.

Lautenberg was one of the wealthiest members of Congress but he fought the people’s fights. The party and the people need a few more like him.

By Jeffrey Page

Here’s where it stands.

Twelve states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage. Twelve countries now allow it, the latest being France. Action later this year in New Zealand and Uruguay could make it 14 countries that recognize the rights and humanity of gay people.

 Even the Boy Scouts have chosen to take a timorous half-step into the 21st Century and acknowledge after 103 years that gay scouts and straight scouts tie square knots precisely the same way. No longer will gay kids automatically be barred, or kicked out of their troops. But it will take more time and protest until the scouts finally allow gay men and lesbians to hold leadership roles.

All this has happened in the very recent past, and no one can honestly say he was unaware that the culture was changing. Yet, some institutions have simply folded their arms on the matter of equal rights for all their people and self-righteously declared: Not in my outfit, not in my organization. One such is Exxon Mobil, which finds it impossible to understand that to reject the demands for workplace equality by gay men and women is to cast doubt on the decency and courage of the company’s officers and shareholders.

Specifically, for the 14th year in a row, shareholders have rejected a proposal to formally prohibit discrimination against gay men and lesbians at Exxon Mobil.

As a result, I’ve decided not to contribute another dime to Exxon Mobil’s coffers, but will buy gasoline elsewhere. Finding a substitute should not be difficult. The Times reported last week that most of Exxon’s competitors have included gay people in their policies on workplace discrimination.

Clearly my protest won’t do much to change attitudes and practices at Exxon headquarters in Irving, Texas, but we do what we have to do.

In going over my 2012 check book register, I found that I spent $667.63 at Exxon gas stations. Interesting statistical aside: $667.63 is about what Rex W. Tillerson, the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, makes in an hour and a half on the job. Forbes puts his salary at $2.2 million. I don’t know if he works a 40-hour week.

So once again – explanation to follow – I am putting scissors to my Exxon Mobil gas card and sending the snipped pieces to Texas (Attn: Tillerson) along with a note announcing that I will not do business with a company that sees some people as less than worthy of fairness on the job site.

“Tillerson,” I will write. “You want to play games with human rights? Not with my $667.63 so deal me out.”

The first time I returned an Exxon card was after the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989, when the tanker ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of Alaskan crude into Prince William Sound. The skipper was found guilty of a negligent discharge of oil and fined $50,000.

In 1989 as well as now, my gas purchases weren’t making the difference between profit and loss on Exxon’s financial statement. But when a spill befouls 1,300 miles of shoreline, kills thousands of birds and fish, and disrupts the lives of countless individuals and small business owners, you’re supposed to do something about it, say something about it.

I tore up my Exxon card but continued using my Mobil card. A decade later, Exxon and Mobil merged. I continued my boycott of Exxon but naively continued to buy Mobil gas, I am not happy to say.

I won’t make such a mistake again, though I would reconsider my Exxon boycott if and when the company wakes up and provides to gay people the protections it offers other employees.

One more thing. Such a policy change at Exxon would have to be accompanied by an apology for taking so long to do the right thing.

By Jeffrey Page

There’s a new religious war being waged upstate. This one concerns prayer at town board meetings.

I used to think that the people who brought the inevitable court actions to outlaw public prayer or ban the display of Christmas trees on public property had too much time on their hands.

What was the big deal? I thought. Christmas is a happy holiday that’s close to the hearts of the majority of Americans. And if we want to get technical, we should remember that aside from its religious importance, Christmas also happens to be a national holiday. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is. Anyway, trees are one thing, but I admit I had second thoughts about the appearance of crèches on public lawns, but managed to get over them.

It made no sense to me that the argument was about a Scotch pine trimmed with colored balls and an angel. Would placing this tree on public property bring down the republic? Not when you remember that witnesses in court use a bible to swear they will be truthful, that the House and Senate open their sessions with prayers, that it’s a Bible our presidents touch as they’re sworn into office.

I’ve been at the receiving end of unrequested religion. In my grade school, we were forced to listen to Christmas carols. I survived. But somewhere in the last several decades I changed my mind and believe absolutely that religion belongs in houses of worship and in the human heart, not in places owned by the public and certainly not in schools filled with young minds but possessing no power to object.

In the Fifties, I attended P. S. 33 in Bellerose, a heavily Christian neighborhood in Eastern Queens. Every year during the 10 days leading up to Christmas, the glee club would parade slowly through the corridors singing carols, ranging from the innocuous, such as “Jingle Bells” to the significant, such as “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

As the singers came, we were herded into the halls to listen. We were allowed to sing along, which I did. I liked the music although I was confused about this business about “born is the king of Israel.”

No one at P.S. 33 ever tried to convert me, no one ever questioned my religion, and no one ever suggested I be barred from the class Christmas party. Similarly, of course, no teacher ever wished me a happy Hanukkah, and if any of the mothers of the Jewish kids ever offered to make potato pancakes and tell the story of Hanukkah, I didn’t know about it.

I still like Christmas carols and the old spirit of the holiday, but there’s no question that years ago in Bellerose, I attended a school that put the First Amendment on its ear by officially establishing a religion. It was a terrible thing to do to a class of kids, but I didn’t get it then.

In the newest case, the governing board of the Town of Greece, N.Y., near Rochester, started in 1999 to open its meetings with a prayer. The town has answered critics with the argument that you don’t have to be a Christian to lead the prayer. In fact, The Times reported, anyone, even an atheist, could say the opening prayer. Where you’re going to find an atheist to lead a prayer is beyond me.

But I think the very use of official time, to accommodate a prayer is, in fact, what the founders had in mind when they cautioned: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

I think the prayer and its defense are not quite as benign as the Town of Greece would have us believe. “Establishment” of an official religion doesn’t have to be done with a gun to your head. It can be an arm of local government informing you that what’s needed for the Town Board to do its business is a word or two from God. And it can be an invitation to wait outside in the lobby if you’re offended by an officially sanctioned prayer service.

No question that what they did in Greece was to establish and exclude in one fell swoop. Two townswomen challenged the Town Board prayers, and were upheld by a federal appellate court, which found that few prayers in Greece were led by anyone but Christians, and that, as reported by The Times, “roughly two-thirds contained references to ‘Jesus Christ,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘your son,’ or ‘the holy spirit.’”

The case is now headed to the Supreme Court where, on the day of the arguments, the court’s marshal will intone: “God save the United States and this honorable court.”

By Jeffrey Page

–You don’t have to be a Republican, a Tea Partier, or a conspiracy nut to agree that Hillary Clinton owes the country another appearance before Congress to explain the increasingly unexplainable circumstances that led to the attack on the mission in Benghazi, the American response (or lack thereof), and the deaths of our ambassador and three other diplomats.

–If Howard Baker were active these days, the question would be: What did Clinton know and when did she know it? Also: What did she do and when did she do it?

–If Clinton can’t or won’t testify, there’s her ex-boss. Ultimately it’s President Obama’s State Department, and Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the other three men killed were his diplomats. Surely he has answers, don’t you think? A headline in yesterday’s New York Times: “Obama to Call for More Security at U.S. Embassies.” It sure took long enough; the attack on the mission occurred eight months ago.

–The unintended satire in the Clinton matter is Dick Cheney’s calling for more testimony from her and demanding, “I think [she] should be subpoenaed if necessary.” Cheney calling for facts is like Pinocchio asking for a nose job, and I suggest that when the lawyers start filling out the subpoena papers, they save one for Cheney himself.

–Maybe after being sworn, Cheney will finally inform us about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction he insisted we go to war to find, the hunt that cost close to 5,000 American lives and wounded 32,000 others. Maybe he could also be asked to explain the intelligence that led him to declare the day before the war against Saddam Hussein began, “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

–Incidentally, Cheney, the personification of gravitas to the people who like him, appeared at a recent private meeting with Republican members of the House and informed all: “We’re in deep do-do with North Korea.” That was our former vice president; that was the man a heart-beat from the presidency.

–While the Obama administration plays games with the First Amendment in charting the telephone calling of 100 reporters and editors at Associated Press, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed something about himself and the way he works. He was discussing with an NPR reporter the Justice Department’s going after those phone records. In a quote that will dog Obama and Holder for the 1,344 days remaining in this administration, Holder said: “I’m not sure how many of those cases I have actually signed off on.” And then he said, “I take them very seriously.” And then he said, “I know I have refused to sign a few, pushed a few back for modifications.” The attorney general twiddles the First Amendment but isn’t sure how many subpoenas he signed?

–Attention Eric Holder: Do the nation a favor and memorize the following 45 words, especially the ones in italics: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

–Speaking of running roughshod over the First Amendment, it is on Obama’s watch that we learn of the Internal Revenue Service’s closer-than-usual examination of applications for tax-exempt status by some conservative groups. Last time anyone looked, conservatives possessed the same constitutional rights as liberals. So yesterday, Obama fired the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. I say “Obama’s watch,” by the way, knowing that other presidents have used the IRS in outrageous ways – the people on Nixon’s enemies list were IRS targets – but somehow I think Americans who happily elected Obama once, and once more maybe not so gleefully, no doubt had thought they were getting better than Nixon.

–And now, for the Quote of the Day as reported in the Huffington Post: “Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. And we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often.” This remarkable insight brought you by Rep. Kevin Cramer, (R-N.D.) in a graduation speech at the University of Mary in Bismarck.

By Jeffrey Page

The headline on a six-paragraph story in the business pages of The Record caught my attention. “PepsiCo pulls offensive ad,” it said, and I knew there’d probably be a corporate apology someplace in the story.

Then I read the first paragraph and was flabbergasted. “PepsiCo has pulled an online ad for Mountain Dew that was criticized for portraying racial stereotypes and making light of violence against women.”

In a commercial for soda?

Well, the ad depicts a white woman moving around on crutches; “battered,” according to Associated Press. She is supposed to pick her attacker from a lineup. All the men in the lineup are black.

Then the story got really weird. A PepsiCo spokeswoman said the corporation only learned that the ad could be considered offensive by some people when the company was informed so by its consumer relations unit. They needed a customer relations unit to figure out that the ad was racist and misogynistic? Can you think of anyone – Klan members excluded – who would not find this ad offensive and degrading?

PepsiCo conceded that some people found the commercial offensive. Some people? How about a sizeable portion of all those who saw it? In fact, can we agree that about 98 percent would think the ad was garbage, with the missing 2 percent having just landed from Jupiter and unaware that there are certain ways in which we don’t depict our people.

To its credit, PepsiCo pulled the ad quickly. But what is not explained is how such a commercial could have been created and used in the first place. Someone at PepsiCo approved that ad. Someone said, OK, great work, let’s run with it.

An unintentionally witty corporate apology came from J.C. Penney which, after doing business one way for more than a century, changed its outlook to attract a younger, hipper crowd. The younger, hipper people didn’t bite, and the people who had been Penney’s foundation customers for decades found other places to spend their money.

When Penney realized its aisles were emptying, it fired the CEO it had hired a year ago. Then it re-hired the CEO it fired to make way for the newcomer. And it ran an apology advertisement with this immortal line: “Some changes you liked, and some you didn’t. But what matters with mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you.”

J.C. Penney went into business around the turn of the last century. You’d think that after about 111 years it would have figured out that you listen to your customers, that you don’t mess with the customer base because everybody knows that retail stores are not really owned by corporations and boards of directors. They’re owned by the shoppers.

Another example of where-was-the-person-in-charge occurred with an advertisement for Hyundai cars that was designed for use in Great Britain. In it, a creative team went for humor and then decided to couple it with the subject of  suicide. Very stupid move. But where was Hyundai brass?

The ad depicted a man trying to kill himself in his Hyundai but failing because the car’s emission control system worked so effectively, according to a story in Advertising Age.

The thing about many corporate apologies is that they’re produced in a manner that suggests the company doesn’t really want to apologize and is looking for an out. “We understand that some people may have found the [car] video offensive,” Hyundai said. “We’re very sorry if we have offended anyone.” That’s we understand, not we know; some people, not all people; offensive, not outrageous. And so, Hyundai is very sorry “if” its ad offended anyone.

For more on corporate apologies, check the NPR program “Le Show,” which runs on Northeast Public Radio at 1 p.m. on Sundays.

By Jeffrey Page

I acknowledge that a while back I vowed no more columns about Limbaugh. Enough was enough of this thumping blowhard, such as when he called Sandra Fluke a “slut” because she testified before a congressional committee that contraceptives ought to be part of basic health care. Later, he apologized, apparently in the belief that saying the words – I’m sorry – relieves you of the onus of having caused terrible pain in the first place.

A quick non sequitur here: In his “apology” to Fluke, Limbaugh, who referred to her on the air as a “slut,” a “prostitute,” and someone who wishes to be paid for having sex, declared, “I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.” If that wasn’t a personal attack, what was it?

Remember back in the Eighties when he called President Carter’s daughter Amy the ugliest presidential child? Then he apologized. Years later he referred to Chelsea Clinton as the official White House dog. Then he apologized.

And do you remember that it was Limbaugh who slandered about half the American population when he referred to feminists as feminazis? Wait, actually I don’t think he ever apologized for that, and his use of the word hangs from him like rotting carrion.

Limbaugh has a way of opening his mouth and revealing an unbelievable degree of ignorance and cruelty, and I feel compelled to withdraw my No-More-Limbaugh vow and write about his latest pollution of the air.

Nowadays, he is distressed about the amount of ink and time being given to Jason Collins – the center of the Washington Wizards team of the National Basketball Association – following Collins’ outing himself as gay. (This distress from someone who spent parts of three shows on the air attacking Sandra Fluke.) As far as most people can recall, Collins is the first American active male pro athlete to declare his homosexuality.

Collins comes at an astounding time in the history of our nation, a time when nine states allow unrestricted gay marriage, when men marrying men and women marrying women get space in The New York Times wedding announcements in the Sunday edition, and when survey after survey finds surprisingly large segments of Americans don’t give a hoot in hell about the sexual orientation of movie stars, athletes, or the guy standing next to them on the subway.

So Collins came out and of course editors and reporters jumped on the story. That’s what they’re supposed to do. This was a culture change. With the understanding that surely there are more gay men playing in the professional leagues of American sports, President Obama sent a positive message about Collins. So did Bill Clinton. So did David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA. So did every fair-minded person in the country.

And then, along came Limbaugh who had just about as much as he could stand about Jason Collins, even if the story involves one of the more victimized groups of people.

Limbaugh got all huffy because, he says, there’s a lack of tolerance for – are you ready for this? – people who are opposed to the very existence of gay men and women. All this coverage makes them look bad. But I haven’t heard of any such attacks.

Have you?

Poor, misunderstood Limbaugh suggested that he is a victim. “Why can’t everyone just put your sexual preferences on Facebook and call it a day?” he asked in a story about Collins in Sports Illustrated. Expand that argument and you have someone asking if it was really necessary for us to celebrate or mourn people like Rosa Parks, Matthew Shepard, Jackie Robinson, Sonia Sotomayor.

Limbaugh complained, “If you want to say you’re gay, fine, but does it have to be rammed down everyone’s throats all the time?”

I know of no such ramming.

By Jeffrey Page

Once again, America has been attacked from within and again, some of the victims were the little ones, the defenseless ones.

And again we confront the vexing question that arises whenever there is a mass shooting or, as in the Boston case, a bombing: What do we do with the killers who steal young lives as casually as they’d swipe an extra after-dinner mint from a restaurant?

The question is a fair one. In fact, you’d have to be a raving optimist to believe that the work of the Tsarnaev brothers at the finish line of the Boston Marathon will be the last such atrocity. Based on a report in a recent issue of Mother Jones Magazine on mass killings in America, it is reasonable to conclude that such acts against America will happen again. Mother Jones found that there have been about 62 such incidents over the last 30 years in 30 states. In those attacks, 513 people were killed and 736 injured. Additionally, Mother Jones found, the rate of such attacks has increased in recent years.

Citing sources, The Boston Globe has reported the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, admitted planting the two bombs that killed three people and injured 170 others. What is a civilized society do with the likes of him?

–Some Americans would wish him a sentence of life imprisonment, not for his sake but for ours. They believe – and ultimately are correct – that every time the American justice system puts a criminal to death, it coarsens the nation as a whole and diminishes the humanity of each of us, its citizens and residents.

–Eye-for-eye types would send Tsarnaev to the death house forthwith.

–Some people argue against capital punishment by suggesting that Tsarnaev would suffer more by spending the rest of his life in prison – knowing he will never walk free – than by being put to death.

–There are people – good ones, sincere ones – who oppose capital punishment but have an asterisk in their souls that shouts the impossibility of mercy for someone with a gun and a cause who kills children. Clemency for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? What about clemency for Martin Richard?

I look at the pictures of Martin, the 8-year old boy who was killed by one of Tsarnaev’s bombs. In the photos I have seen, Martin is smiling. He is the toothy kid with the hand-made sign that said, “No More Hurting People. Peace.” He’s the kid whose sister and mother were gravely injured in the bombing. I think about Martin and his family a lot.

And after two decades, I still think a lot about Baylee Almon, the year-old baby who was among the dead in Oklahoma City in 1995, and about Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who was killed in the movie house massacre in Aurora, Col. last July. She was 6.

And there are Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Aveille, Benjamin and Allison at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn. Every one of them was either 6 years old or 7.

A few questions for Zest readers: If we sentence ordinary one-victim murderers to life imprisonment, are we bound to refrain from imposing the death penalty on someone who kills children? What should be done with such a criminal?

And so, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I have heard some arguments for sparing Tsarnaev. He’s only 19. He was probably under the influence of his angrier, older brother. Capital punishment diminishes all of us.

Yes, yes, and yes.

So what do we do with him?

By Jeffrey Page

I saw the movie “42” over the weekend and was stunned by its depiction of Jackie Robinson’s ordeal when he broke the color line and became the first black ballplayer in the major leagues. What’s needed now is a portrayal of the shabby way he was treated in 1956 as his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers came to an end.

Over his 10 seasons, Robinson mostly played second base and was one of the game’s most ferocious competitors. You didn’t want to be playing second base when Robinson got the sign to steal from first, and you didn’t want to be pitching with Jackie coming to bat in a clutch situation.

By the end of the 1956 season, Jackie Robinson had racked up a lifetime batting average of .311, had smacked 137 homeruns and stolen 197 bases. It would be instructive to count how many hits and runs his teammates made as a result of his ability to drive opposing pitchers crazy as he danced off the bases, threatening to steal, but I know of no such statistic.

He was an old 28 when he played his first game for Brooklyn and an ancient 37 when he played his last regular season game. Yet in that last game, even at 37, he went one for four at the plate, scored a run and drove in another as the Dodgers beat the Pirates at Ebbets Field.

We boys of Eastern Queens had watched Jackie Robinson for years. We loved his nerve, his talent, his determination, and maybe most of all, his courage to have survived the racist intimidation that major league baseball and some of its fans dished out so easily. We tried to run like him. We tried to stand at the plate like him. Soon, we knew he was slowing and wondered if he would wind up as a Dodger coach (maybe), the first black manager (was baseball ready for that?), maybe hold down a front office job in Brooklyn.

But no, none of the above.

In the highly skilled way that baseball club owners have of breaking their fans’ hearts, the Brooklyn front office had other ideas about Robinson and about the team. In the Dodgers’ case, the words “front office” meant only one man: Walter F. O’Malley, the team’s principal owner and a man who never understood the meaning of the word “loyalty.”

The Dodgers won the ’56 National League pennant and would again face the Yankees in the World Series. Admittedly, Robinson had a terrible post season, batting an anemic .174 in that seven-game series. Yet he also drew seven walks, stole two bases, scored four runs and drove in two more.

One month later, Walter F. O’Malley announced that Jackie’s days in Brooklyn were over. He had traded the great Jackie Robinson to the New York Giants. For Jackie, O’Malley got Dick Littlefield, a journeyman pitcher, and $10,000. Littlefield for Robinson? Was Walter F. O’Malley out of his mind?

Now I don’t pretend to know the nature of the discussions between Robinson and the Dodgers. Did he make unreasonable salary demands? Did he rub Walter F. O’Malley the wrong way? Was he demanding a long-term contract at age 37?

It didn’t matter. We were aghast to know that he wouldn’t be back. That he would be tantalizingly close uptown at the Polo Grounds. That we would root for him to get on base every time he faced a Dodgerpitcher. That, for better or worse, he was ours and we were his, and that’s the way it was supposed to be and the way it would have to be.

What is it about club owners? Remember when the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee and then from Milwaukee to Atlanta telling the fans along the way to go to hell?

Remember when the Yankees unceremoniously dumped Elston Howard? After 12 years in the Bronx, they sent Ellie Howard, a fine catcher with a .273 lifetime batting average, to the Red Sox. What could be worse than that?

Early in January of 1957, Jackie Robinson made his own announcement. He was retiring from baseball and would not be available to be toyed with by the likes of Walter F. O’Malley.

Later that year, as though to prove his perfidy was boundless, Walter F. O’Malley moved the Dodgers, a money-making team, from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. It was a terrible time, and gave rise to the often reported colloquy between Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill.

Who were the three worst men in history? Hitler, Stalin and O’Malley.

What would you do if you had a gun with just two bullets and the three of them were together in a small room?

Shoot O’Malley twice of course.