It is not easy raising two kids who are not biologically one's own. Remarrying has challenges. The rules of engagement are hard enough, but the responsibility of children can introduce enormous complexity. Her kids were twins, and the marriage took them away from the small town they had known since infancy. That was one reason we simply were not hitting it off.

The biological father made an effort to stay out of the way. But after he promised them guitars for a joint birthday, I caught up with him. I explained that we had not been sure about his financial condition, and so she and I had talked with his sons about the importance of their dad's love. I wanted him to be aware of our approach. He was visibly impressed. We shook hands, and began a deepening friendship.

We each enjoyed the company of the other. But a larger part was a common interest in the kids. He had been a hothead, and he mourned the loss that resulted. We talked about his hopes for reconciliation with his sons. Slowly, a strategy emerged. At my urging, he divorced himself from disciplinary issues. Those issues were rare, but we decided he should focus on being the good guy in their lives. I handled rare infractions and reported back to him. He solicited my thoughts on his role. Over time, it seemed to be working.

One June Sunday my loved one handed the phone to me. It was her ex, my friend. The boys had telephoned him for Father's Day, and he wanted to thank me. I was happy to tell him they called him on their own. We chatted about his plans to purchase a small bit of acreage with a large pond. He asked what I thought about him maybe teaching them to fish.

My wife and I were shopping when the call came. My friend was dead, killed in a Kentucky coal mine where he worked. After that, I simply did my best. The two sons are now talented young men. One studies music. He plays the piano with a breathtaking combination of precision and soul. He is featured at college gatherings. The other is a master photographer, an artist. His photos are featured in college publications. Their dad would have been proud.

29 miners died in West Virginia last week. Even in a perfect environment, mining is a dangerous profession. But the mine had been cited for hundreds of violations. The company lobbies hard against safety codes. A conservative public figure angrily demands to know why the union had not brought about safer conditions. Isn't that what unions are for? It turns out there is no union at the mine. The fellow who runs things boasts about profits that come from keeping unions out. Still, the UMW sent experts to help with rescue efforts. Company management tossed them out.

Amid the pressure for profits and the defensive posturing that comes with accidents, we sometimes lose sight of the transcendent value of human life. Each lost miner, like my friend, has a story all his own. A story that has been suddenly, tragically, ended.

Honored reader JMyste posts an interesting suggestion here.

I doubt you will ever see this, but I am going to say it anyway, because it is weighing heavily on my mind, and someone at the Ranch may tell you of its existence.

This site needs a questions for the editor section. We fans often would rather ask you a question, then just hear what you think. That way, we could elicit your opinion, which would make us feel very powerful.

If you do not have time to field the barrage of questions that would undoubtedly result, you could always pick one at random and then answer mine.

I do read every comment. Every one. I usually try not to respond out of what I like to think of as courtesy to the writer. Most comments stand on their own. Those that provoke me with peculiarly cruel logic (which is to say those who disagree with me using compelling arguments) will get a public answer, but I hope they like seeing their comments unrebutted for a bit.

How to put this delicately? I am not the owner of the site. So I must balance suggestions such as yours with the sacred duty that befalls me of sucking up to the bosses. Feel free to let me know how well I do this go around.

I am granted a great deal of freedom in writing what I want, when I want, on whatever subject I want. This freedom might be circumscribed were I working for a mainstream publication. The owners and I have a wonderful relationship (how am I doing so far?) which is currently marred only by the absurdly low amount of money involved. (See how I did that?)

The recent travails of the Republican party remind me of an old story, which comes to me from an earlier age. It involved a young fellow just hired as a stage hand by a burlesque house. He bragged about it to a friend. He especially liked meeting attractive people who could not be thought by any standard to be overdressed. Today the experience would not raise an eyebrow, but in those days he was thrilled. His friend was happy for him, but concerned. "How much money is involved?" The smiling lad said "$25 dollars a week." The friend, hating to burst the lad's bubble, couldn't help himself. "I dunno," he said cautiously. "$25 doesn't seem like very much." The young fellow leaned forward and softly explained, "That's all I can afford to pay."

I like your idea, and I will pass it along to those enlightened souls (See what I did there?) who provide this golden opportunity. (Well, what do you think?)

(We assure Mr. Deming that more money will be involved when we feel we can squeeze it out of him. - The Owners)

I was once a young proponent of the Vietnam war. Control of South Vietnam by US and Vietnamese forces was nearly absolute, as the Democratic administration continually told us, and we needed to rout the Moscow directed Communist conspiracy. We were winning the good fight.

In early 1968, the Tet offensive offered televised evidence that the administration was either ignorant or not completely truthful. Many of us began a self-questioning that turned to skepticism, then transmuted into cynicism, and finally became full fledged anger. President Nixon's approaches to China demonstrated that Communism was not monolithic. The Moscow directed grand conspiracy was much more limited than we had imagined. The war was mostly a civil war with religious overtones. Buddhists were being suppressed by a corrupt Christian minority which controlled the government. While young Americans died in what looked to be a pointless war, not a single Russian commissar had his whiskers singed.

When anger became became rage, we demonstrated. As a student I participated in a march on Washington. Locally, I joined a sit-in. One incident has remained with me. During the local demonstration, a group of students blocked the way of college employees. Students occupied each of the steps in a stairwell. A middle aged woman tried to make her way down the stairs, delicately avoiding the outstretched limbs of the students. For a moment, she began to lose her balance. A young protester leaped to his feet, held out his arm, and helped her down to safety. I was not that student, a fact that shames me to this day.

This week, a confrontation occurred along Olentangy River Road in Columbus Ohio. Those opposing health care reform clashed with those demonstrating in favor of reform. There was no violence. One man, suffering from Parkinson's disease, attempted to reason with those on the other side. He explained that he would likely die without medical treatment. After being shouted down, he sat wearily. But the confrontation did not stop.

Steve Benen provides an account, backed up by an on-the-scene video, courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch. The Parkinson's victim listened wearily to a lecture by a young man. "You're looking for a hand-out, you're in the wrong end of town. Nothing for free over here, you have to work for everything you get." A couple of others each threw a crumpled dollar bill at the sitting man. Catcalls came, of course. One shouted "No more hand-outs." Another: "You love a communist." The video is here.

Benen wryly observes, "it's safe to say we won't be hearing the phrase "compassionate conservatism" again anytime soon." Perhaps. It could also be a lesson on the capacity of people, passionate about a cause, to lose sight of their own humanity. I will always recall a young anti-war protester decades ago, neglecting to help someone down a flight of stairs.

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A couple of years ago, I told of an incident from my youth. An adult neighbor demanded to know what I thought about politics, and so I answered.

Pointing his finger in my face, he screamed that young bums like me just wanted to tear the country down, that we had no respect for the law. I managed to blurt out that I had not broken any laws that I knew of, but that only made the man more angry. In a flash, I had become the manifestation of every unpatriotic punk he had seen on television, burning flags while our brave boys died fighting communism.

My mom quickly spirited me out of the fellow's house while my dad stayed behind to calm the enraged man. I could hear him yelling behind us as we went down the street. "You broke my law. You broke MY law." Before we got home, the neighbor's son caught up with us. "Man, that was COOL."

A syndicated columnist, Leonard Pitts, shares his frustration at similar logic, expressed with less drama. A reader of his, writing to his office, insisted that no black US soldier had ever been a combat hero before 1947. He was under the impression that, since the armed forces had been segregated up to then, black men had been barred from combat. Documentation would not sway him. He knew for a fact that black Americans had never seen combat, and any evidence to the contrary was liberal trickery.

As conservatives repeat the most elemental untruths as fact, we on the not-lunatic-right-wing roll our eyes at outrageous acts of false witness. A couple of days ago the Republican Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour expressed his opinion that Americans have rejected the health care proposals passed by the Senate and the House. Nothing wrong with that opinion, and you can make the case, depending on what poll you use. But then he explained why he believes Americans don't like the plan under consideration. "Their idea of health care reform is the cost should go down. And in this one, CBO says the cost will go up." Actually, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the exact direct opposite. Reform would lower health care costs and reduce the deficit.

The Governor went on. "So this is a system that is very bad for jobs because it clobbers small business." In fact, only 14% of America's businesses, the largest mega-corporations, would have any shared responsibility requirement.

As it happens, polling shows that the more Americans are informed of what is in health reform plans, the more they are enthusiastic in supporting reform. It is possible that Republicans are simply as deceptive as they appear. Never let the truth interfere with a good story. An alternative is that they genuinely do not know what they choose not to know.