So there I was. It was 1967 and I was eyeball-to-eyeball with my black-and-white TV. As I watched, a group of very distressed Africans stared back at me. It was the start of civil war in Nigeria.

The nation of Biafra had been born, and all hell was about to break loose as members of the Igbo tribe waged a doomed war for independence. Each year things got worse.

"In countries where there truly is no backup, you just have to hang in there and wait for the next flood to pass, wait for the next drought to pass.

"But what is disturbing here is that we are in a country with major back-up . … It takes just 30 days to mobilize for war, so when you've got a war within your own country, it is amazing that we were so dumbfounded, like deer in the headlights."

There they go again. The Republican National Committee, the right-wing noise machine and their spear-carriers in the mainstream media have been in attack mode over the last few weeks. This time their target is Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the distinguished senior Democrat who will become chair of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats win the House back this fall.

The instant the news broke that FBI agents raided the office of Black U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. — and announced that they had a videotape of him allegedly stuffing bribe money into a freezer — some Blacks loudly grumbled that Jefferson was the victim of a racial double standard.

I know I can be a funny guy, but the laughter took me by surprise. During a recent interview, I was asked about my thoughts on personal responsibility. I hesitated a bit.

Those two words can be very charged. Often, the very mention of "personal responsibility" will cause eyes to bug and heads to spin like those of the demon-possessed. I decided to tread lightly.

 Equal opportunity for JeffersonIn its May 23 edition, The Oregonian stated that enrollment at…

It must be very difficult to become a healthy adult in a family with a history of multigenerational pathology. Normalcy must be an impossible goal to reach if your grandfather robbed bones from graves and then made money for and with Hitler's war machine.

Ever wonder what it would be like to be invisible? You could go around and nobody would see you. Nobody would know you existed. Do you remember playing hide and seek? Wow. If you were invisible, you could always win the game because no one would be able to find you.

Politically challenged New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told a national TV audience recently that a victory by his challenger — Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu — would be a step back to the past. Though Nagin is Black and Landrieu is White, the mayor did not intend this as a deliberate racial slap at Landrieu. But then again, he didn't have to — Blacks have held unbroken power at New Orleans City Hall for three decades.

In a country where 13 million children live in poverty and 9 million are uninsured, most of them in working families, money determines a lot about the circumstances that affect children's health. Health shouldn't depend on wealth — but far too often it does.