Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Sorted by date Results 726 - 750 of 1143
Join News Leaders Association and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the annual nationwide celebration of access to public information and what it means for you and your community. WAYNESVILLE, Mo.- Five minutes late, Darrell Todd Maurina sweeps into a meeting room and plugs in his laptop computer. He places a Wi-Fi hotspot on the table and turns on a digital recorder. The earplug in his left ear is attached to a police scanner in his pants pocket. He wears a tie; Maurina...
Far from being the enemy of the people, day in and day out we take our role as the Fourth Estate seriously and work hard to protect your right to know, making public records requests and attending public meetings to keep you informed. Why? Because we believe all the business that the government does, whether in open public meetings or behind closed doors, is your business. We believe every last penny the government spends is your money. We believe it is your right to know every transaction, every decision, every expenditure and every...
You’ve probably never heard of Erica Newland. And if she had her druthers, it’s a safe bet that she would have preferred it stayed that way. But Newland, a former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, found herself a front-line warrior in the battle to protect the Constitution from the excesses of President Donald Trump. Newland, who is both Jewish and a civil libertarian, grew increasingly uncomfortable with the administration’s attacks on non-citizens. And one exchange, included in George Packer’s extraordinary...
First of all, we Cartwrights are completely floored by your concerns, interest, and involvement in the recent benefit for Steve. On behalf of Steve and Jenny, Al and Shannon and the boys, Vikki and I: thank you for the wonderful support you have given us. Our community has provided one more example of how much we care for each other. We have actually been lucky despite the rapidity of Steve’s illness and transplant. His progress has gone amazingly well. He feels better, he’s able to work at rehabilitating the physical stamina that he lost by...
U.S. President Donald Trump "Has a Problem as the Coronavirus Threatens the US," assert the authors of a New York Times analysis: "His Credibility." In the tagline and elsewhere in the article, the authors imply that the spread of COVID-19, aka "the coronavirus," constitutes a "public health crisis" and a "national emergency" which Trump's "history of issuing false claims" handicaps him in selling plans to address. If they're right about Trump's credibility, they're pointing to a feature, not a bug. The last thing we need is an impetuous...
As insurance companies push doctors to save money by switching their patients to generic drugs, complaints about those generics appear to be on the upswing. That’s the observation of journalist Katherine Eban, who has written a book, “Bottle of Lies,” that tells a very dark tale about the generic drug industry and the safety of generic drugs Americans are increasingly taking. “My inbox is full of communications from patients who were on a drug that worked but were switched to a generic that didn’t work,” she told me. “Patients find themselv...
I bought a BMW. It’s a white convertible that screams “Midlife crisis!” from the highest rooftops. Of course, when I bought it two years ago, I didn’t think I was having a midlife crisis. I just thought I liked the car. Although, I don’t think most men in their fifties, who buy totally impractical sports cars, are rushing to their therapists with a self-diagnosed midlife crisis. Now, I’m doing what most middle-aged men do with impractical sports cars – I’m selling it. I love the car. I bathe it regularly and rub it with a diaper. It’s im...
Celebrating Women Business Owners March is Women’s History Month and we’d like to highlight some of the great strides women business owners have made over the years. In 2016, over 1.1 million businesses owned by women in the U.S. employed 9.4 million workers with a payroll of $318 billion. Annual receipts of these firms topped $1.5 trillion! There are over 8 million more females that are self-employed. Most female-owned firms (99.9%) are considered small businesses having less than 500 employees. According to the latest data from the Cen...
Get this: New parents are giving newborns outlandish names— so they’ll stand out on social media. That’s according to a new survey of British parents by ChannelMum, which found 72% of respondents “believe a unique name will help their child stand out from the crowd,” StudyFinds reports. So, what are some of these “unique” names”? Maevery, Faelina, Idalia, Evabeth and Tessadora are the top five new names for British girls. Jaspin, Charleston, Brigham, Ranger and Wrenlow are the top five new na...
On a recent frigid day in February as I was entering Target to defrost my nose hairs and purchase a designer toilet brush, I noticed that they already had an array of skimpy women’s swimsuits on display, which dredged up some disturbing memories for me. If you’ve ever wondered how awkward it might be taking adolescent daughters shopping for swimwear, imagine that you’re taking adolescent daughters shopping for swimwear. That should do it. For fathers of girl children all over the world, except maybe in Saudi Arabia, bathing suit shopping is a...
I hope the document remains locked away unused for many years, but my brother and I finally got around to meeting with a lawyer and helping our mother make out her last will and testament. I’m not going to knock it if you download a cheap do-it-yourself template from the internet, but don’t be surprised if your Hummel collection winds up in the hands of a Nigerian prince! Yes, a professionally prepared will is the second-best way to make your explicit wishes known to your family, surpassed onl...
Recently the Wyoming federal district court dismissed the lawsuit filed in October by R-CALF USA, and ranchers Tracy and Donna Hunt and Kenny and Roxy Fox, against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). The court concluded that there was no longer any “case or controversy” as the agencies had officially and completely withdrawn their April mandate to require U.S. cattle ranchers to begin using radio frequency identification (RFID) ear tags and register their premises as a con...
The country is now in the grips of a mysterious bout with polarization not seen for generations in American society. Hate and anger seem to have displaced civil discourse and honest disagreement. For some strange reason, we are an unhappy people in a time of impressive prosperity. The economy is having less impact on public opinion than ever before. Usually, presidential failures and successes ride with the economy. But not in 2020. Why not? Keeping the Peace Discussion of politics has become...
“Middlebrow.” I sitˆ typing this column on the 20th anniversary of the massive heart attack that took the life of my father, and “middlebrow” is one of the words that pops into my mind when remembering Dad. Except for learning the skills of a medic during his year in the United States Army and taking a Dale Carnegie “How To Win Friends and Influence People” course while in the insurance business, Dad had no formal education beyond being the salutatorian of the Marshall County (Tennessee)...
I believe President Trump’s State of the Union Address articulated an inspiring vision of American greatness. The President made a powerful case that his pro-growth economic policies are not only sustaining record-high levels of optimism among America’s 30 million small businesses, but also driving upward mobility among historically underrepresented minority entrepreneurs. The President’s speech gave entrepreneurs the confidence they need to make important decisions such as hiring new employees, buying new inventory, and/or expanding into...
Last week the attorney for R-CALF USA and several individual rancher-plaintiffs, who alleged in October that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) violated U.S. law by attempting to force radio frequency identification (RFID) technology upon the entire U.S. cattle industry, filed a response to the agencies’ motion to dismiss. The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 4, 2019 by Harriet Hageman, Senior Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, alleged that the agencies’ April 201...
Have you noticed when you turn on the TV, there always seems to be a new financial scam? We are warned of hackers, identity thieves, or the latest financial cyber threat. In 2019, $8.5 billion was spent on funding cybersecurity. It, unfortunately, has become a priority of mine to ensure my information, and that of my family remains safe. It can be a full-time job keeping passwords safe, monitoring accounts for fraud, and practicing safe shopping while online. The one-piece that typically gets forgotten is protecting our credit file...
I would love to know what my dog is thinking or feeling. Apparently, someone does know, or at least has an inkling. I recently stumbled upon an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled, “What does it feel like to be a dog?” The piece was written by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz who runs a dog cognition lab Barnard College. It’s a fascinating look at whether dogs experience emotions comparable to our own. First, let me make public and perfectly clear that I volunteer my Great Dane, Bosco, for any and all behavior modification studies and/or clinic...
If you’ve lived in North Dakota for long, you’ve more than likely put the wise words “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” into practice. Last year, we contended with spring flooding that damaged homes, public infrastructure, hundreds of roads and thousands of acres of farmland in western and south-central North Dakota and up and down the Red River Valley. On top of that, we had the most precipitation in 125 years of record keeping from August to October, triggering an unusual bout with flooding during the fall harvest season. Heading...
When I was a child, we didn’t have cable television in our home, so PBS was our go-to programming after school. I remember learning world geography with “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego” and reading along with Levar Burton during “Reading Rainbow.” I especially liked “Ghostwriter” because, well not surprisingly, I loved to write. My grandfather called me the stenographer. With a quick poll around the office, I learned that each one of us has our favorite PBS series. Some of us have many....
Readers of fine newspapers may recall that last July I unleashed a tirade titled “Slow drivers: are they driving you insane?” Several readers offered a “Yes, but…” response. They acknowledged the irritating nature of slowpokes but suggested I should devote equal (or greater) time to denouncing speed demons. So, for the sake of fairness (and because my son is currently taking Driver’s Education and because I’ve started pondering how many of my clobbered pets would have died of natural cause...
Several weeks ago, I chronicled a herculean effort to smuggle dry curd cottage cheese from Ashley Super Valu to my mother in Frederick, S.D., with the help of a hearse that happened to be going that direction. The mission was a success, so we were able to have cheese buttons for Christmas dinner. They taste better when delivered in a Lincoln. The episode was even mentioned on Prairie Public Radio. Sue Balcom, once alerted to the shortage of dry curd cottage cheese, made an emergency broadcast to listeners to tell them how they might make their...
America’s healthcare system is still a mess. The Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, has sparked continued increases in premiums and deductibles while failing to bend the healthcare cost curve down as promised. That’s just one of the assurances ACA supporters made about the new law it failed to keep. Obama was badly misinformed when he promised people could keep the coverage they had, if they liked it, once the ACA became law. Some suggest he knew at the time...
If you’ve lived in North Dakota for long, you’ve more than likely put the wise words “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” into practice. Last year, we contended with spring flooding that damaged homes, public infrastructure, hundreds of roads and thousands of acres of farmland in western and south-central North Dakota and up and down the Red River Valley. On top of that, we had the most precipitation in 125 years of record keeping from August to October, triggering an unusual bout with flooding during the fall harvest season. Heading...
For most baseball fans, the season ends when the World Series final putout is made. But in 1946, the lucky residents of Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Des Moines, Denver, San Diego, Fresno, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco and, finally, Long Beach had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Satchel Paige’s Negro all-stars play against Bob Feller’s white all-stars. The barnstorming tour, organized by Feller and conceived on his long, dangerous shifts manning anti-a...
