As with all Americans, my wife, Gena, and I had our hearts broken again last Wednesday as we heard about another killing spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in which four people died and 16 more were injured at the U.S. Army's largest active-duty installation.

Chelsea Schilling, WorldNetDaily's commentator editor and journalist extraordinaire, reported shortly after the tragedy: "The shooter, identified as 34-year-old Ivan Lopez, is among the dead. Lopez reportedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound," but only after being confronted by a courageous female military police officer in the parking lot. (Interestingly, it was also a female cop who felt responsible for thwarting the Fort Hood gunman in 2009. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people — the deadliest attack on a domestic military base in U.S. history.)

With Obamacare's March 31 sign-up deadline and subsequent penalties looming over the heads of young and old Americans, citizens are wondering more than ever — and with good reason, I might add — whether Washington has dished out another bill of bad goods. And here are a few more solid reasons our skepticism about socialist medicine continues.

Reporter Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily recently reported about how Obamacare is blocking patients from paying for their own treatments. The feds are already capping what some citizens can spend on their own health care, even if those patients are willing and able to cover their own costs.

A few weeks ago [click here for column], I began to show from extensive studies and evidence how alcohol use and marijuana use compare in terms of addiction, withdrawal and using motorized vehicles.

This week, I will discuss in greater detail how alcohol and marijuana compare in their effects on our minds, bodies and relationships. And then I want to conclude by addressing the most overlooked aspect of the marijuana legalization debate: its effects on the youth of America.

There are those who are champions on courses of competition. Then there are those who are victors in their caliber of character, too. In our often wayward world, the latter ought to be given not just a gold medal but a golden crown.

Being dead last is never fun. I would imagine that it is particularly painful if you've trained like a world champion, traveled halfway around the world and are competing at the Winter Olympics.

Football. Olympics. The mere terms reflect pride, passion and the American way.

Football is one of the best pastimes in our country, and its crescendo reached its zenith this past Sunday with the Super Bowl. Congratulations to the NFL champions, the Seattle Seahawks.

I'm interrupting my series on Common Core State Standards for public schools to join the appeal to Iran and North Korea for the release of American hostages like imprisoned American pastor Saeed Abedini and missionary Kenneth Bae. And I'm also calling upon President Obama and Congress to step up their action, stand for religious freedom and fight for the release of these godly men, whose crimes were nothing more than exercising their faith.

For those who haven't followed the news on these men of the cloth, pastor Abedini was sentenced to eight years by an Iranian court last January for starting house churches in the 2000s, an era in which they weren't even regarded as a threat to Iran's security.

In Part 1 of my series on the Common Core State Standards being infused into 45 state public school systems, I revealed how the feds spent $350 million of taxpayer money, giving grants and waivers to muscle states and local school districts to accept the standards. And that was after 2009, when feds awarded, in the Department of Education's words, "governors approximately $48.6 billion ... in exchange for a commitment to advance essential education reforms ... including: college- and career-ready standards (aka CCSS)."

In Part 2, I showed how the feds are injecting their progressive agenda into curricula taught to U.S. kids in elementary, middle and high schools via their educative minions posted in academic arenas and among CCSS curricula creators.

Last week, I explained what the Common Core State Standards are and how, despite the federal government's saying it's staying out of the classroom standards business, there is much evidence to show that the feds are intricately linked to them.

The first way I demonstrated that was by pointing out that the feds have spent $350 million of taxpayer money, funding and giving grants and waivers to muscle and bribe states and local school districts to accept CCSS. And all of that was done without a single act of Congress, meaning the federal government — including the White House — dumped protocol again to dodge accountability.

While gridlock is the game in Washington, pilfering and degradation apparently are the pastime of some unpatriotic thugs at war memorials across the country. For me, that is about as low as a nation and its people can go.

This past week in Natick, Mass., veterans and other law-abiding citizens were stunned to discover that a soldier's helmet — from one who died in battle — had gone missing from the community's prized Fallen Soldier's Memorial. The helmet was cemented atop a rifle that is part of a display that also includes a piece of the twin towers and two military boots beside a wall of names of service members who died during the battles of World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.