News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2078 - 2102 of 3210
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...
’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...
In some ways, 2016 will go down as a landmark year for grizzly bear management. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its proposal to delist grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Area — or GYA — after a federal court rejected a 2007 delisting rule. The grizzly population in the Greater Yellowstone Area reached its recovery goals prior to 2007 and the population continues to exceed all recovery benchmarks, as outlined by the Endangered Species Act and FWS. Recovery of grizzlies in the GYA is one of the greatest con...
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...
My new car has all of those fancy extras designed to keep me from killing someone while driving. It has a thing that beeps when someone’s in my blind spot; it has a back-up camera that will beep and hit the brakes if I’m about to back into something. When it’s in cruise control, it will automatically slow down if the car in front of me is going slower than I am. I still have to yell at that driver and give him a hand gesture when I pass him, but someday, cars will do that automatically, too. Let’s face it: This car practic...
I’ll bet you a can of Who Hash that you didn’t realize the classic holiday special “Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas” — based on the 1957 book — celebrates its 50th anniversary Dec. 18. Federal regulations require that I give the full, formal title of the program, so you don’t confuse it with “William Faulkner’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas” or “Aristotle’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas.” According to Wikipedia, the holiday perennial almost didn’t get made. The author didn’t want any of his books animated. Lege...
Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.” He was talking about why education matters in a representative democracy, but it’s a safe bet that had he known about fake internet news, he’d have said the same thing — except maybe with more pointed words. Our representative democracy depends on ordinary people making sound judgments about politicians and policy. This is hard to do at the best of times. Issues are complex. Being able to sort out...
I support tree love I stole the title from someone else who, in turn, had stolen the phrase from a T-shirt. The sentiment fits. I like trees. Leo, the man who helps me with my gardening, might raise his eyebrow. I had him obliterate trees and bushes left and right over the past few months. In my defense, I know the importance of negative space in creating an artistic view and I planted new and different greenery of all kinds with the intent of keeping it under moderate control. Together, we have created a park of art. And, I...
