Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 1146
As I write this, summer has officially begun. It's the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. The weather is fine, and it's time to take in a live show (or nine). This year a pop culture icon will come alive at the little theatre on Central Avenue in New Rockford. "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" debuts July 12 at Old Church Theatre, featuring the art of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. "Peanuts" debuted in newspapers on Oct. 2, 1950, years before my parents were even born. The short...
Maybe it’s a good thing that my teenage dream of becoming a TV programmer never materialized. Analysts have regarded the over-the-air free TV networks as dinosaurs for years, but now even the cable channels and streaming services are watching over their shoulders for asteroids. Oh, the new Golden Age was nice while it lasted – with companies trumpeting ambitious 5-year plans for special-effects-heavy prestige projects, offering new life to niche programs dumped by the traditional networks and...
“What are the implications of the trial of Donald Trump for the Constitution, presidential power and the rule of law?” a reader asks, adding another important question: “Did the Framers of the Constitution adequately limit presidential power?” These enormously important questions have been and will continue to be discussed and debated for months and years to come, and they require more than a single column to offer a summary explanation. We focus this week on the adequacy of constitutional limitations, turning next week to the questio...
“Mom, wanna be on my BeReal?” my 16-year-old daughter asked me one day. “Um, sure,” I replied sheepishly, because frankly I didn’t even know what she was talking about. She told me to look at her camera phone, and she quickly snapped a photo of us. I didn’t really give it much more thought at the time. Since then, my husband and I have made guest appearances in both our daughters’ BeReal feeds several times. What is BeReal, you ask? Well, it’s just another social media app that all the kids ar...
Oil money, oil money. When you have as much of it as Saudi Arabia has, it can buy a lot of things – including a sacred American sports institution like the PGA. As all of us hackers know, the PGA Tour shocked the golf world this week by announcing it will merge with the LIV Tour, the upstart Saudi-backed professional golf tour that the PGA has been in a bitter legal fight with since last year. The details of the nearly $3 billion deal are still unknown. So is the impact it will have on the w...
Why Congress may impose ethics code on Supreme Court justices Rising calls for Congress to enact new ethical standards for the Supreme Court, sparked by recent revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose financial transactions, have generated a debate on whether the legislative branch possesses constitutional authority to impose a code of conduct on the judiciary. The divide is familiar. With some prominent exceptions, Republicans object to the creation of an ethics code, invoking separation of powers concerns and asserting...
This time of year, there’s a produce patch in my backyard that requires no maintenance other than a regular cutting. It’s none other than rhubarb, and I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as I should. Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable. In use it is considered a fruit. That’s according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who also notes that rhubarb actually belongs to the buckwheat family. Most of the nation’s rhubarb is grown in Washington, Michigan and California. There’s even a grading sys...
Upon receiving a utility bill for water, sewer and garbage service on an investment housing property I’m in the process of rehabilitating, I promptly reached out to our city auditor Becki Schumacher, as we had not received any prior bills to date. We purchased the property from Eddy County at auction on the courthouse steps. The property was abandoned and had gone back to the county for failure to pay taxes. We’ve owned the property for about 1 ½ years and have been working on bringing it up to standards as a rental. We have since been prom...
A reader recently wrote to ask a question on the minds of many Americans: “If the courts check the other branches of government, who checks the courts?” The reader continued: “Since the Supreme Court enforces constitutional limits on the presidency and Congress through the exercise of judicial review, who can restrain the Court, particularly at a time when public opinion registers strong opposition to the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution?” This good question has been raised at other junctures in American history when the citizenry...
Newspaper publishers were recently told that our postage rates are set to increase by 8 percent in July. This is the third rate increase since August 2022, and a total of 35 percent in increases in just over two years. The cost of printing newspapers has also increased, by 24 percent since the spring of 2021. Annual subscription rates, meanwhile, at the Independent and Transcript have increased by $6 in the past 8 years I’ve been a publisher. In order to fully cover the costs of printing and p...
It’s a positive trend that I hope continues: the resurgence of summer picnics. According to Mental Floss, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a picnic boom beginning in 2020 that is showing no signs of letting up. In 2020, with restaurants shuttered and experts telling us the bug didn’t spread so easily in outdoor air, many people, in particular younger people, began picnicking. I was lucky to grow up only a few miles from a county park that offers 3,000 acres of rolling green hills, walking and bik...
The continued revival of interest among state legislatures in posting the Ten Commandments in public schools may present to the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to reverse yet another decades- old, landmark precedent, this time one that prohibits such displays on grounds that they promote religion in violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Although time expired in the legislative session before the Texas House of Representatives could approve a Senate bill to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, the Longhorn State and seve...
Summer is a great time to relax with a good book, whether it be under a cabana on the beach or in a chair on your patio. Our local libraries in both Carrington and New Rockford are hosting Summer Reading Programs, and their kick-off celebrations are coming up this week as we officially start summer break. A staff member in the Carrington office was chatting with one of her book club buddies last week. They had finished their latest title before everyone else and were so surprised by the ending....
Every year in late spring, parents of college students all over America travel to university campuses with stylish IKEA storage bags or (in our case) cardboard boxes that once held bulk orders of toilet paper and tortilla chips. When the parents arrive, they joyfully greet their academically-hungover children and start the arduous and sometimes pungent process of “un-dorming.” My wife and I recently drove in our decrepit but cavernous 2013 SUV to move our middle daughter and her dirty laundry back home from college. Upon our arrival to cam...
“Presidential power, the 14th Amendment and the public debt” The debt ceiling standoff between President Joe Biden and House Republicans has illuminated the public debt clause of the 14th Amendment, one of the most obscure provisions in the Constitution and one seldom discussed since the Civil War. Its invocation may be the key to avoiding economic catastrophe. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment provides: “The validity of the public debt, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned.” Legal scholars and historians agree that the clause was des...
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s time to get real. Here in the newsroom, we struggle too. No matter how many positive stories we publish, the “bad news” stories seem to rise to the top for readers. Yes, we must report on these topics, however unpleasant. It’s our job as journalists to read through the police reports and court filings and help citizens make sense of the crazy in our world. And when we do publish all the details, we know those stories will get read. However, it’s th...
There is a loneliness epidemic in the United States, but there are some simple ways we can address it. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Surgeon General released a report titled "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." The report found that even before the COVID lockdowns chased us into months of isolation in our homes about half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. Loneliness brings with it considerable health implications. When a human lacks connection with other hu...
In 1977, in McDaniel v. Paty, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that held unconstitutional one of the last anticlerical remnants of the founding era, a 1796 Tennessee law that prohibited ministers and priests from holding public office. The statute, drafted at the dawn of the republic in the name of separation of church and state, reflected a widespread legal policy among the early states that sought to curb the outsized role that clergy played in English public affairs and the colonies, in which laws respecting establishments...
Every year for Mother’s Day I give flower pots from a local greenhouse to my mom and my mother-in-law. It’s a great way to show our appreciation, and it brightens their yard and gives them something to enjoy all summer and into the fall. I typically choose an arrangement of common varieties, such as geraniums or petunias, that has already been potted and ready for purchase. This year I decided to take it up a notch. The theme is kindness and gratitude, and I’m planting the pots myself so I can...
You’ve no doubt read the headlines about this legislative session. The past four months have been a rollercoaster of bills and legislative priorities. As the 68th Legislative Assembly has wrapped up and gone home, I want to share some highlights from this session affecting our state’s insurance industry. Your legislature has made a big step forward in fire safety. With the passage of SB 2211, we’re providing all the funding that is meant for the fire service back to local fire departments and districts. The funds from insurance premium taxes...
It's an excuse I've been dreaming of: A reason to NOT mow my lawn. A "No Mow May" movement is afoot to nurture our bee population for a good reason: bees are incredibly important to our own survival. According to Bee City USA, an initiative of the Xer-ces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, bees are highly important pollinators whose busy work enables the creation of one-third of the food and drink we consume. Here's how bees work: They are drawn to plants for their sweet nectar, which they...
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, as part of their commitment to separating church from state, unanimously adopted a clause in Article VI, declaring that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” In their adoption of the oath clause, the Framers demonstrated a liberality of spirit because all of delegates, except those from New York and Virginia, came from states that discriminated against some religious denominations by imposing some religious test as a req...
My trip to Salt Lake City was one I won’t forget. Breathtaking scenery, great food and family time were among my favorite parts of the five-day excursion west. Leaving work behind was definitely the hardest. I knew it would be a challenge, and so I made lists and meticulously tied up loose ends before we hit the road. I left the keys in my vehicle in the garage, just in case the newspapers didn’t make it to Carrington on Friday and needed to be picked up in Jamestown or Fargo (as has been the...
When Stew Leonard opened what he dubbed a “dairy store” in Norwalk, Conn., in 1969, it was a wonder of marketing, with a petting zoo, animated Disney-style characters and an on-site bottling plant. There were serious retailing strategies as well – a limited product line, attractive house brands, slick promotions and an abundance of free samples. The concepts pioneered in that supermarket are seen today at Trader Joe’s, Costco and Whole Foods. You’d think such an innovator would resent – even th...
In February 1793, in Chisholm v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court, fully mindful of the evolving political and legal tensions surrounding the nature of the nation-state relationship, rendered its first important decision on the scope of state authority. Chisholm, a citizen of South Carolina, sued the state of Georgia for failure to pay him for goods delivered to the state. In short, Chisholm was trying to collect a debt. But the “great cause” in this suit, as Justice James Iredell characterized it, presented the critical issue of whether...
