Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen, the Washington Post reports, has "repeatedly accused [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg of choosing growth over the public good." The Post's headline puts it a slightly different way: "Growth over safety." The meaning of "growth" in this context is pretty obvious: Zuckerberg's company makes a lot of money, and he wants it to make even more. The meaning of "safety" is somewhat more nebulous. Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever refers to "difficult decisions...
When I was in high school, we filed down to the library (before the rebranding of “media center” entered the landscape). We crowded around the front desk, the librarians eager to show us something called the World Wide Web. “Pick a topic – anything,” one said, and when none of the gangly teenagers volunteered, she chose zebras. She cranked the enormous monitor around and showed us – just type in the word, and you can get all the information you want, far more than our Dewey decimal system offers on these shelves. The ancient printer sta...
It’s very easy these days to say that social media is toxic. People act in ways they’d never do in real life, because it isn’t real life. They act like feral wolves, because they can. The Twitter police don’t carry guns, and their badges are imaginary. In fact, social media is one big, imaginary world, and we’re all way too wrapped up in things that don’t matter – the opinions expressed by strangers in public. Last week, Jon Gruden’s life exploded because of some private email exchanges that...
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I’ve taken on two new roles, and I traveled more than 400 miles from home in the midst of it all. I became the 10th publisher of the Foster County Independent on Oct 1. I was also abruptly promoted to first vice president of the North Dakota Newspaper Association a few days later, and I will be considered for election as president in May of next year. Both of these responsibilities I accepted willingly, after thoughtful consideration. Then, as my h...
Article V of the Constitution—the Amendatory Clause—provides the constitutionally prescribed means for changing the Constitution to keep it adequate to the needs of the American people. This innovative provision empowers the citizenry and their representatives to breathe life into the aspirational language of the Preamble: “ to form a more perfect Union.” The essential values embodied in the Amendatory Clause tell the story of American Constitutionalism. Above all, its inclusion in the Constitution demonstrates the framers’ humility. Delegates...
Raising three daughters has come with many delights, challenges, prayers and moments standing in that certain aisle at Target trying to figure out the differences between “ultra,” “Infinity FlexFoam,” “overnight,” “sport,” “wings,” “Radiant,” and “Just ask your wife, you goober.” One ordeal that all parents are destined to endure at some point is the dreaded school project – specifically designed by educators to exact revenge upon parents who actually believe that their child is “a joy to teach.” When our daughters first started school, I...
North Dakota is always competing. We compete with other states, and even other countries, for businesses, jobs and the workers needed to fill them. We compete for workers who choose which state to live in based on economic strength and opportunity, infrastructure and communities, and the quality of life. So, when the opportunity arises to make sound investments in our state and provide meaningful tax relief to our citizens using unanticipated resources – at a time when our financial condition i...
The Supreme Court’s authority, grounded since the dawn of the republic in its prestige and reputation, now faces the storms that have overwhelmed Congress and the Presidency, and diminished the institutional popularity of our political branches. A recent Gallup poll revealed that just 40% of the American people approve of the performance of the nation’s highest tribunal. The political polarization that has torn apart our grand republic represents a grave threat to the perception of the court as an apolitical body rendering detached, authoritati...
Citizenship is a public office in which electors are blessed with certain rights and charged with civic responsibilities. Unfortunately, more people demand their rights than their responsibilities so the state suffers from a chronic deficiency in participation and judgment. Government has hit bottom in public trust, now standing at one-third the level that prevailed in the Eisenhower-Kennedy years. Citizens spend more time bad-mouthing the government than appreciating it. This attitude is...
My buddies Ayres and Klinger and I walked its crowded corridors for hours on Friday nights, hoping to meet girls. That's what we did at South Hills Village Mall in the late 1970s, when we were teens and the American Mall was in its heyday. Built in the mid-1960s, and the very first indoor mall to be constructed in Pittsburgh, "The Village" was a typical, large two-level structure with "anchor" department stores at each end, a Sears Roebuck in the middle and a variety of retail stores in...
The Supreme Court’s watershed decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) which, as we have seen, introduced a general constitutional right to privacy, sufficient to protect a married couples’ right to use contraceptive devices, has exerted tremendous influence over the past half-century. Roe v. Wade (1973), very likely the most controversial ruling ever rendered by the High Tribunal, rests on Griswold and the right to privacy. In Roe, the court’s opinion, authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, held that the right to privacy, whether groun...
Last April, President Biden announced his American Families Plan, which promises many wonderful things such as more affordable education, comprehensive paid family and medical leave, expanded nutrition assistance for children and families, and bigger tax credits for workers and families, just to name a few. What is funding this amazing plan? Well, tax reform, of course – but as always, the devil is in the details. As stated in The Treasury’s Compliance Agenda, “The President’s proposal require...
The autumn leaves are expected to be extra vibrant this year in Pennsylvania, though they are changing colors a week later than is normal. That's fitting. Very few things are "normal" this year. According to Merriam-Webster, "autumn" is "the season between summer and winter comprising in the northern hemisphere usually the months of September, October, and November...." Autumn is also defined as "a period of maturity or incipient decline." Fall has always been my favorite time of the year. The...
The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut established the right to privacy as a fixed star in our constitutional constellation and, in the process, guaranteed married couples access to contraceptive devices. Griswold falls into the category of a “great” case because of its enormous influence in expanding the rights and liberties of Americans. Griswold involved an old Connecticut law that prohibited married couples from using contraception. The law reflected a legislative preference for procr...
I happen to believe vaccines are a good idea. That's why I got one. Everyone in my family is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Furthermore, a lot of what I hear as justification for not getting vaccinated is nothing more than kooky talk, based neither in fact nor reality – from the DNA manipulation conspiracy theory to microchip implantation paranoia. By the way, if the government wants to shoot a chip into me so I can be tracked, go right ahead. You're likely to be very disappointed by what m...
Although not mentioned in the Constitution, the right to privacy has been invoked by its enormous following as thoroughly American and indispensable to our conception of liberty and freedom. Its partisans have expressed numerous reasons for its exalted status in the hearts and minds of the citizenry. It prevents the government from spying on the people. It protects personal data. It protects freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It protects one’s reputation, voting rights and participation in politics. While not everyone agrees with the a...
On July 26, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order under which the U.S. government's Medicare Part D program would have negotiated lower prescription drug prices based on an "International Price Index." Implementation of the order was delayed pending counter-proposals from Big Pharma, but the Democratic response was swift. "Instead of meaningfully lowering drug prices, President Trump's Executive Orders would hand billions of dollars to Big Pharma," House Speaker Nancy Pelos...
Context matters. Take this simple statement: Nearly 10 percent of the world’s people live in extreme poverty. This is true. And standing alone, without context, this statement would lead many to think the world has a huge poverty problem. They'd be right. But they'd also be missing a big part of the story: Just twenty-five years ago nearly 30 percent of people lived in extreme poverty. So the world’s extreme poverty problem is actually getting much better. The prospects for the future would be very different if, instead of steadily imp...
Whatever you think about the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial, 5-4 midnight ruling on the Texas statute forbidding most abortions in the state, one thing is clear: the Court bears, in the name of accountability, the great responsibility of explaining its reasoning to the American people. The Court’s reliance on the “shadow docket,” a historic practice of ruling on emergency petitions, to uphold a novel law that greatly diminishes Roe v. Wade, and converts every Texan into a law enforcement official, constituted a sharp departure from the usua...
Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was a newly minted warehouse supervisor for a farmers cooperative. I can remember almost exactly where a customer’s truck was parked when I overheard him telling one of my co-workers something or another about a plane crash up north. A few minutes later, I received an urgent (landline) phone call from my wife. She had been watching NBC’s “Today” show and saw breaking coverage of the suicide attacks on the Twin Towers (and other targets). In my firs...
We just celebrated Labor Day. No, we didn't. Labor was forgotten while most of us only noticed that we had a holiday and spent it lounging, fishing, swimming, sunning, camping, playing – everything but recognizing the reason for the holiday. One thing is for sure, we took no time to honor labor. Modern unions first appeared in the 1870s when working people had to fight, starve and die to organize. The idea of unions was repulsive to the growing corporate community where no fringe benefits w...
Cramer pens letter to Senate leaders about energy policies U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the Senate Budget Committee, wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Wednesday, expressing his opposition to Democrats’ proposed $4 trillion spending package and the energy policies contained in it. “I write to you to express my opposition to your pursuit of passing another massive spending package filled with partisan wish-list...
Our botched withdrawal from Afghanistan is hard to witness, but hearing the reports of Taliban brutality is even worse. The U.S. Sun reports that “women face having ‘fingers cut off for using nail varnish,’” and that the Taliban “reportedly shot a woman dead in the street for not wearing a burqa…” My heart aches for all Afghanis. It especially aches for the young women who’ve flourished during the last 20 years by freely developing their minds and talents in school, but who now must submit to...
To avoid the partisan recrimination that now permeates discussions, perhaps we need to go to a paradigm that gives us neutrality while stripping away the unreasonable passions of the day. In our policymaking system, our nonpartisan dialogue can consider the endless debate between the common good and the private good. The common good is policy that accrues well-being to society; the private good is the reservation of everything in the Bill of Rights (first Ten Amendments), plus the economic...
Americans typically consider questions about the meaning of the Constitution through the prism of their own political views and values. As a consequence, they tend to defend as constitutional the acts of officials whom they support, and criticize as unconstitutional the acts of those representatives whom they oppose. This approach implies that the meaning of the Constitution turns on whose ox is being gored. Politics, partisanship and party affiliation are the controlling levers of constitutional understandings. This method of constitutional...
