News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2075 - 2099 of 3212
It's probably too obvious to be worth mentioning, since I do write for part of my living, but I love words. The thing is that it's not just the words themselves — like how "unite" and "untie" have the same letters but the opposite meaning (what are the odds?). Or how one letter can have all the meaning in the world — compare public health to pubic health. Or the grammar of how your panda "eats shots and leaves" or it "eats, shoots, and leaves." It's also the visual pos...
In this busy time of year — while I wait for the the first wave of crowds to run out of money and the second wave to get their gifts exchanged post-Christmas — so I can do my holiday shopping, I’ve spent some time reading the news recreationally. For fun. I know, weird, right? But this is what I learned: Epa.gov says that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day people in the U.S. increase their household waste production by 25 percent, which is about 1 million tons extra ...
Before moving to Havre, I didn’t believe small towns existed, much less small town Christmases. It was a myth, all of it, fantasies invented and romanticized in Sherwood Anderson and Larry Watson books. Sure, I’d driven through quaint southern small towns and devoured the most delicious, succulent, fresh-smoked homemade Tennessee barbecue ever known to mankind. But the southern small towns I passed through weren’t real. For all I knew, they were part of a set, a real-life “Truman Show.” None of the people I exchanged...
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ... Yes, that Mitch McConnell ... is backing a bipartisan investigation into allegations that the Russian government tampered with American elections and maybe, just maybe, helped Donald Trump win the presidency. So can we all agree that this is a thing now? Can we all agree that hacking by a foreign power hostile to American interests isn’t politics or sour grapes from Democrats, no matter what the President-elect claims in a series of fact-free tweets? That it’s actually a grave mat...
The Universe loves irony. As proof of my wisdom in this, I give you exhibit No. 1053, the 2016 Election of the President of these United States. As pretty much everybody on Earth and in the planet’s geosynchronous, elliptical and circular orbits and still subject to its gravitational pull, knows, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to become future 45th president of the U.S. Ironically, though Clinton won the popular vote, receiving the highest number of votes in h...
The Electoral College meets this Monday in what will be the final step in Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency. But it will also be the last chance for #NeverTrump dead-enders to keep Trump out of the White House. And now, the anti-Trump effort has been given new fuel by allegations of Russian attempts to interfere with the presidential election. Trump won 306 electoral votes. There are 306 electors, actual people, who are expected to vote for him next Monday in Electoral College meetings in state capitals across...
’Tis the season to be jolly! From now until New Year’s Day, the merriment typically continues unabated. Between the gift-giving and spiked eggnog, some folks set aside a few moments so the reason for the season can be considered. Chances are that Jesus Christ and, more generally, the Christian tradition enter the equation. Wandering minds should instead focus on the Prophet Zoroaster and his religion. It is, after all, the grandfather of Christendom. Zoroastrianism is perhaps the smallest major religion in America, but do...
Believe me, I understand if you’re ambivalent or even disdainful of the religious aspects of Christmas. I understand why you couldn’t care less which festive cups Starbucks uses, why you’d just as soon your grandchild be a dancing snowflake as an adoring shepherd, why “Season’s greetings” resonates just as well as “Merry Christmas” with you, why you’d rather hear “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” than Handel’s “Messiah.” Maybe pompous ivory tower professors have lectured you that “everyone knows” the New Testament was written hun...
Back in 1969, by a whopping vote of 339 – 70, Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives united to pass legislation to do away with the electoral college. A companion bill, co-sponsored by Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield and supported by President Nixon carried the Senate by a strong vote of 53 – 34. That, though, was short of the 2/3 majority necessary to pass the proposal on to the states for ratification as is required for amendments to the Constitution. What drew the two parties together was the ele...
Seventh grade. 1957. I don’t know why I went to our first junior high dance. I couldn’t dance, not even a two-step. Didn’t know how. We were all “expected” to go and most of us showed up. For me, the experience felt like I imagined showing up for the guillotine. I knew more about Marie Antoinette than I knew about the waltz. The dance was held in “the pit” at the old grade school. The pit had a gym floor, a raised walk around area, and perhaps once was used for little guys’ phys ed. At that time, the pit was most often used...
The nation’s newspapers are struggling mightily to find columnists who are willing to write nice things about Donald Trump. That’s according to a report in the Washington Post, indicating that the regular stable of conservative pundits — from George Will to David Brooks — isn’t delivering enough pro-Trump op-eds. As it happens, I was just finishing a column praising the president-elect when the Post’s story came out. Even before taking office, Donald Trump is sending a powerful signal to the nearly 63 million Americans w...
A major threat to liberty is the assault on the right to discuss political issues, seek out alternative information sources, and promote dissenting ideas and causes such as non-interventionism in foreign and domestic affairs. If this ongoing assault on free speech succeeds, then all of our liberties are endangered. One of the most common assaults on the First Amendment is the attempt to force public policy organizations to disclose their donors. Regardless of the intent of these laws, the effect is to subject supporters of...
As president, Donald Trump could be undone by untruths. He ran a successful campaign laced with lies, but he cannot run the country that way. Finding workable solutions to policy problems requires a common understanding of what the problems actually are. Facts, not fabrications, fuel the governing process. News reporters and fact-checkers tried aggressively to call out Trump’s falsehoods during the campaign, but those efforts made little impact on his true believers. The new president’s former adviser Corey Lewandowski pra...
I grew up with Saturday Night Live. When it debuted in 1975, I was a high school freshman and looked a little bit like Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella, with her eyeglasses and unkempt hair. For that reason alone, she endeared herself to me. The other day I thought of Emily when I heard that my alma mater, Villanova University, had tabled an investigation into an alleged “hate crime.” According to news reports, a black female student complained that she was knocked down by a group of white men chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump” as th...
“You almost got fired because your company had a holiday party? You’re going to have to explain.” “Look, where I come from, we call holiday parties ‘Christmas parties.’ Nobody told me I was supposed to avoid anything relating to our country’s Christmas tradition.” “What did you do?” “Well, the owners of my company threw our holiday party after work one evening. Thanks to me and the boys in the sales department, the adult beverages were flowing. That’s when the Human Resources director threatened to can me.” “You were unaw...
The Hill County Park Board is establishing a Finance and Planning Committee. This committee will be a permanent committee of the board that will develop recommendations, advise the Park Board and support the park manager concerning financial and planning matters primarily for Beaver Creek Park, but will include all county parks. Beaver Creek Park is self-sustaining — not supported by tax dollars — and the park can only spend what it raises, therefore it is important to have good financial plans and management. The com...
HEART’S CONTENT, Newfoundland and Labrador — Of all the landmarks of high tech, including the Menlo Park lab where Thomas Edison perfected a marketable incandescent light bulb, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett-Packard’s audio oscillator was developed, the Harvard dormitory where Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, none is as unlikely as the ragged shoreline of this remote fishing village, where 150 years ago the Old World and the New were connected by an underwater trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. Here, in a tiny marit...
There’s been talk among some conservatives and Republicans that Democrats are plotting to “Bork” the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. That’s not right. What Democrats really hope to do is to “Ashcroft” the man soon-to-be Minority Leader Charles Schumer likes to call “my good friend from Alabama.” Sessions’ supporters have expected it from the moment President-elect Trump made the Alabama senator his first Cabinet pick. Sixteen years ago, John Ashcroft was a Republican senator nominated by a Re...
Barack Obama had just beaten John McCain by a margin of 10 million votes and 7.2 percentage points — the biggest Democratic win since 1964. Democrats also won both congressional chambers. And yet, despite this decisive pro-Democratic mandate to govern, congressional Republicans resolved, at a private dinner on day one, not to offer a scintilla of cooperation. They resolved to thwart Obama’s efforts to fix the Great Recession, hoping that his failures would grease a Republican comeback in the 2012 race. Newt Gingrich, a din...
Larry Jefferson, a black man, played Santa Claus at the Mall of America in Minnesota for four days last week. Naturally, racists on the internet lost their minds over it. “I clicked on the story fully expecting that they picked a Somali to play Santa. That would be fitting for Minnesota,” someone named Victor Edwards, surely destined for a lump of coal in his stocking, wrote in the comments to a story posted by a CBS station in Minnesota. “Have a radical muslim who hates America and the western world play Santa. Give him a...
There is almost nothing real about “reality TV.” All but the dullest viewers understand that the dramatic twists and turns on shows like “Bachelor” or “Celebrity Apprentice” are scripted in advance. More or less like professional wrestling, Donald Trump’s previous claim to fame. Welcome to the reality TV presidency. Nothing president-elect Trump says is to be taken literally, nor evaluated for its truth content. His surrogates have made that clear. Once and future sidekick Corey Lewandowski recently admonished journalists at...
How do we know Dr. Ben Carson is unqualified to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? Because House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said so, calling him “disturbingly unqualified.” “There is no evidence that Dr. Carson brings the necessary credentials to hold a position with such immense responsibilities and impact on families and communities across America,” Pelosi said. She supported President Obama’s nominee, Julian Castro, whose “necessary” experience in the housing industry was limited to being mayor of San Antoni...
I am 8 years old. Some of my friends say there IS a Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in the Communist Party paper Granma, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, El Presidente. Is there a Santa Claus? — Virginia O’Hanlon Dear Virginia: Your little friends are wrong. Of course there is no Santa Claus. Did your papa not tell you that I banned all likenesses of Santa, a symbol of Yankee capitalist greed, in 1959? Did your papa not read the 1959 Time article that explained how I required all Christmas decorations to be made o...
I would first like to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday Season from the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and the Chamber staff. During this time of year, many people give unselfishly of their time to make the holidays a little more special for all of us. And we are very grateful to their efforts and time. Sometimes “thank you” just doesn’t seem to be a strong enough expression of one’s gratefulness. As I proceed, you will soon see what I mean. It takes many people willing to give unselfishly of their t...
During a brief stint working in public health, part of my regular tasks was to write Public Service Announcements, or PSAs, on topics related to health matters. And when I say “writing PSAs about health matters,” I mean “learning things about illnesses and the human body that have scarred me for life.” No one likes getting a cold or flu. I get that. We can build up a certain amount of resistance to the viruses by surviving illnesses as children and by being healthy in general, but we really can’t become immune to them. It...
