As Christian nationalism, the political right and Trump-mania seem to tighten their grip on the country, maybe now is the time for me to take a deep dig into the complex preciousness of . . . life itself.

Hey, guess what? I’m “pro-life” — by which I mean, you know, pro-life in a deep, soul-gripping, planet-loving, war-hating way. By which I mean: Let us reclaim Roe v. Wade from the smug, bureaucratic moral certainty — “your body, my choice” — of the anti-choicers, who apparently could care less about the impact Roe’s overturning has had on medical care and the safety, both physical and spiritual, of women.

But I want to put my words into the paradoxical context of life itself. As a man, I am writing, of course, from the perimeter of the process. I am a dad. I’m also a journal-keeper. The other day I happened to dig back nearly 40 years into an old notebook and reread, for the first time in decades, the journal entry I wrote the day after my daughter was born. Mom and newborn were still in the hospital. That evening, when I came home, I had to let my words flow.

Friends,

It was announced recently that it appears the final count may now be in — and Trump has FAILED to win a majority of the popular vote. His final total, as of now, will be under 50% — or 49.83%.

This was no landslide. It was the smallest percentage of a popular vote victory in a Presidential election since Richard Nixon in 1968.

Here’s how little we lost by:

Just 12 votes per precinct across the entire United States!

That’s it. With Harris behind by just 2.4 million votes out of the 152 million who voted, that’s an average of just 12 votes per precinct across the nearly 200,000 precincts in the U.S.

After several years of rejecting the Ohio Coalition To End Qualified Immunity’s (OCTEQI) petition summary, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office on Nov. 25 finally officially accepted their summary of its proposed constitutional amendment seeking to end qualified immunity for peace officers and possibly other government officials in Ohio.

The OCTEQI believes, as other activists do, that the only way to curb police brutality is to change policy. Qualified immunity shields law enforcement and other state actors from personal liability (civil suits).

A November 8 ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court prompted Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to re-evaluate the summary and its title, “Protecting Ohioans Constitutional Rights.” His office had rejected the proposed constitutional amendment nearly ten times before, but the OCTEQI time and time again was unrelenting in its effort to gather the roughly 1,000 signatures for the AG to approve the next step.