America

A reader who is a college professor writes:

Bowe Bergdahl walked off.

In the court of public opinion, this is the central fact all can agree upon—-that a 24-year-old Army private first class who had been in Afghanistan fewer than two months walked off his outpost one day and vanished.

Everything that happened between Bergdahl’s walk-off and the present moment, where he stands trial for desertion and “misbehavior before the enemy,” has formed the basis of one of the most bizarre and dramatic tales of a missing soldier in recent memory. To say this case has become a political flashpoint is an understatement.

I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country; whilst the latter may turn to some advantage the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws. The importance of manners is a common truth to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as a central point in the range of observation, and the common termination of all my inquiries.

Submitted by Richard Fernandez via PJMedia.com,

This is a neat story. Last year, Christopher Ingraham, a Washington Post reporter who writes stories based on what he finds mining data sets, did a piece on the best places to live. According to the data he was using, the worst place in America was rural Red Lake County, Minn.

When he called it that in the paper, people in Red Lake County were upset — but very polite about it! Someone invited him out to visit, and Ingraham went. It turns out that Red Lake County is a beautiful place to live. He liked it a lot. And then he got to thinking: