Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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As a heat wave hits America from coast to coast, it’s hot outside – but cool inside, thanks to the triumph of air conditioning. For most of human history, there was little people could do to avoid heat. During the day, it drove people outside of their homes to enjoy the shade of a tree or to take a refreshing dip in a lake or river. At night, folks in cities slept outside on their porches, roofs and even fire escapes. When I was a kid in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, few homes had air con...
Judicial profiles to better understand the Supreme Court We citizens know a lot about our presidents – their background, philosophy and character – and sometimes more than we care to know. The same is true of our congressional representatives. By comparison, we know relatively little about our Supreme Court Justices. This needs to change. A better, indeed, more fully-informed historic understanding of the views, experiences, temperament and character of the men and women that have served on the nation’s High Bench will, in the name of civic...
It’s been a wild week of baseball. I photographed the Babe Ruth District 4 Championship on Sunday in Hillsboro. The contest spanned two games, 17 innings and nearly six hours from first pitch to last photo op. Hats off to the New Rockford Black Sox for hanging tough against the HCV Blue Sox and finding a way to come out on top! The Legion district championship was played in Steele just as this edition of the Independent was going to press, and it was Carrington Post 25 vs. New Rockford Post 3...
Don’t thank Hollywood for “Sound of Freedom.” The movie, about a former Homeland Security agent who goes to Colombia and rescues more than 50 kids from child sex traffickers, is an action-thriller – a drama. But it is based closely on the true story of Tim Ballard and his personal fight against one of the planet’s most evil and profitable criminal activities – human sex trafficking. “Sound of Freedom” was actually finished in 2018. But because it couldn’t get Netflix or a major studio in Hollywo...
“Constitution does not shield presidents from defamation suits” The Justice Department’s announcement this week that the Constitution does not shield presidents from civil lawsuits stemming from a president’s defamatory remarks represents two important victories – one for constitutionally-limited government and the other for individuals who could be destroyed by the words of the nation’s chief executive. The DOJ’s declaration clarified its position on the broad question of immunity for former President Donald Trump against a lawsuit filed...
I was among a small group of three who decided to explore downtown Crosby, Minn., the nearest town to the lake house my husband’s family inhabited for a few days this past week. The population is 2,300, so it has a few more residents than Carrington. This central Minnesota town had a fair amount of traffic that Saturday afternoon, however, a sight that I would love to see in New Rockford or Carrington. No doubt the lake (one of Minnesota’s 10,000) – and the nearby Cuyuna Country State Recreation...
I dream of the day I will be 100% debt free! I took on debt fairly early in life, when I borrowed money to help cover the cost of my Penn State degree. That turned out to be a terrific investment – I got a good communications job at a high-tech company right out of college and paid it all back without incident – so that modest debt turned out to be a wise decision. Debt in and of itself is not a bad thing and often a good thing. I've been lucky to buy a house and a few other properties bec...
The Declaration of Independence – its words, elements and ramifications – remains profoundly relevant in America. As the founding document of the world’s longest running democracy, and the ultimate expression of the ideas, values and principles that culminated in the American Revolution, it certainly deserves a special place in our national consciousness, debates, policies and laws. The celebration of the Declaration, from coast to coast on July 4, unites the nation in civic idealism in a way that no other national holiday can. Students recit...
Every year, during the last few days of June, I sit at my computer and wait impatiently for the most important Supreme Court decisions to be announced. Last year, the picnic brought the Dobbs decision, which ended legalized abortion, so it seemed like anything else would be a let-down. Boy was I wrong. Last week, the Supreme Court announced that giving someone an advantage because of their race was illegal, unconstitutional and dead wrong. If you thought that this was already the law of the...
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s repudiation of the “independent state legislature” theory in Harper v. Moore. The widely-admired conservative judge, J. Michael Luttig, called it “the most important case, since the founding, for American democracy.” Indeed, nothing less than the preservation of judicial review, checks and balances and the vital role of courts in defending the constitutional order were at stake in this case. In fine, the North Carolina legislature boldly asserted that its authority...
Most of us have experienced long hold times or dropped calls when trying to get through to a customer service agent. You may have even received incorrect information the first time you called and had to start the process all over again. Unfortunately, this is what many people who are trying to reach the Social Security Administration (SSA) experience. Thousands of older North Dakotans, people with disabilities and their families rely on Social Security. And they should also be able to rely on quality customer service to get their questions...
No, we don't need more sleep. It's our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don't need more sleep. We need to wake up and live. This poem, which was presented as a meme on my Facebook feed this afternoon, was just what I needed. It made me stop in my tracks and think. Better yet, it was just the inspiration I needed to write this column. I see and read a lot of conflicting advice these days,...
Dear Generac standby home generator, I want to apologize for calling down multiple elaborate curses upon you for being so expensive as you sat loitering beside the house almost completely idle for the three years since I financed you – despite the fact that the electricity in our neighborhood had previously been about as reliable as a toddler doing Algebra. I must admit that I bought you on the rebound. I was just coming off a string of hurtful betrayals by our power company. We had been on and off for some time. Often, when our power went o...
A reader’s question has captured the history-making nature of the forthcoming trial of former President Donald Trump. “What are the implications of the trial for the Constitution, presidential power and the rule of law?” The gravity of the nation’s first federal indictment of a former president cannot be overestimated. The rule of law, constitutional government, presidential power and, we should add, American Democracy, are on trial. Defenders of President Trump, like the former chief executive himself, decry the indictment as part of a long-...
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...
