Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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Plans and dreams – starting in childhood and lasting through all our lives we dream and make plans. In grade school I dreamed about being the best artist in my class. Didn't happen and I'm still a lousy artist. When I got into high school I dreamed about becoming the star basketball player and being on the honor roll, too. Made honor roll in my junior and senior years, but I couldn't dribble worth an "expletive deleted". I dreamed of going to college and being #1 on the dean's list, then a...
"Certain Greeks came up to the feast and said to Phillip, "'Sir, we would see Jesus.' [When Jesus was told] He said, 'Most assuredly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, when it dies it produces much grain ... For this purpose, I have come to this hour.'" John 12:21-24. Father announces a resurrection, a glorifying of Jesus, a harvest on Heaven's Faith Seed, bringing many sons to Glory. Hebrews 2:9, 10. Father's Voice was heard as thunder! Jesus' death on the...
William Shakespeare was born close to April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-the-Avon, in England, 100 miles northwest of London. Roger Williams was born either as early as December of 1603, or as late as April 5, 1604, in Smithfield, a section of London. Shakespeare's father, John, was a glover in Stratford-on-the-Avon, in that he stitched gloves out of animal skins. Williams's father, James, bought, sold, and traded textiles. Shakespeare became a famous playwright in London at the Globe Theater, but...
Last week, I spoke on the Senate floor to fight a blatant power grab by the federal government. The Senate considered a resolution attempting to block the "Waters of the United States" (WOTUS) rule from President Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This rule would change the definition of navigable waters to include things like roadside ditches, puddles on construction sites, and farm ponds. Think about that – President Biden's EPA and his Army Corps of Engineers apparently believe t...
Property tax relief has always been my number one priority in the State Legislature. Last Friday the State Legislature began debate on the Revenue Committee's primary property tax relief bill for 2023. Although LB 243 was introduced by Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, the Revenue Committee adopted his bill as a committee priority bill and amended several other bills into it, including one of my bills. So, today I would like to tell you about what the Legislature is currently doing to provide all...
We are going to look back years from now and wonder how we failed young girls so badly. Between social media and fashionable gender theories, we are making teenage girls depressed, anxious, and trans. In a Substack essay the other day, a mother wrote of her daughter: "She was among the last of her small group of biologically female friends to socially transition. It was mid-pandemic, and she spent most of her time with her best friend, who had, unbeknownst to me, shown her hours upon end of...
The first 2 years my parents and I lived in Winnemucca, Nevada were filled with excitement and hard work. I had a new bride and we were part of something rarely done – starting a newspaper from scratch and seeing it rapidly grow into one of the most influential, respected and successful newspapers in the state of Nevada: the Humboldt Sun. We built our success on our philosophy of what a hometown paper should be. A newspaper is just that: a paper filled with news of immediate impact, concern a...
Passover was a cloistered event. A lamb was killed, roasted, and entirely consumed before morning. No one went out into the night. However, 2000 years later, Jesus broke such protocol. After He washed the feet of His Disciples, He broke the bread and poured the wine, sent Judas out, and began to teach love as only He knew how to convey it. Suddenly, He not only went out into the night, He took Disciples with Him to the Garden of Gethsemane. While Peter and others fell asleep, Jesus went on,...
Life in the Unicameral Legislature is always full of surprises. Last week I saw things I thought I would never see. The structure of the Unicameral Legislature is such that it allows for a single State Senator or a minority group of State Senators to control how the debate on a bill proceeds on the floor. So, today I would like to tell you about what has been happening at the Capitol in Lincoln and how I intend to fix it. Sen. Machalea Cavanaugh of Omaha has effectively derailed the first half...
How much does a mug shot mean to you? To Alvin Bragg, it apparently means quite a lot. All signs point to Bragg, the progressive prosecutor in Manhattan, indicting Donald Trump for his 2016 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. The old Karl Marx line is that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. This historic first-ever indictment of a former president of the United States would skip straight to farce. First, there's the tawdry and relatively trivial subject matter. Trump...
Last time in these pages, I mentioned Jonathan Winthrop's "city on a hill" sermon, "that all the eyes of all people are upon us." Winthrop considered himself a type of Moses who was leading his people, like Israel, to a new land, to build a new Jerusalem. This is spelled out in John Barry's 2012 book, "Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty." Winthrop and his fellow Puritans believed the city on a hill should have a church and a state, and t...
"Therefore, looking unto Jesus, Who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, and has sat down at the right hand of the Throne of God." Hebrews 12:2 Consider this Man, Jesus, who borrowed a donkey, rode through jubilant crowds, crying, in gut-wrenching sobs, because Jerusalem missed her hour of visitation by an invisible God in His visible Person. Continuing to the Temple, He overturned tables of money changers, answered tests of every manner and in every matter. He watched as people...
One of the bills that I co-signed this year is LB 712. LB 712 was introduced by Sen. Brian Hardin of Gering. This bill is important because it would help with the needs of the Panhandle once they add an additional 3,000 people to the workforce for a new ballistic missile upgrading project. Seldom does the Panhandle ever get to be the recipient of legislation that would significantly benefit the economy of the Panhandle and this bill would do just that. LB 712 appropriates $26 million to the Grou...
Presumably, Donald Trump will never produce the dark secrets promised about Ron DeSantis' past. But his team thinks it already has one -- the Florida governor once was a Reagan Republican. "There's a pre-Trump Ron and there's a post-Trump Ron," someone in the Trump camp told Axios. "He used to be a Reagan Republican. That's where he comes from. He's now awkwardly trying to square his views up with the populist nationalist feeling of that party." In his CPAC speech doubling down on "MAGA," Trump...
Picking up from the previous Historical Argument article, I'll continue in the same vein with some United States Constitutional arguments. Recently our country has seen activities by various levels of government, from states to our national government that, at the very least, could be assessed as unconstitutional. Unfortunately our educational systems around the nation have failed in many schools to teach our young for some time about the Constitution of the United States. There are few today...
"Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the Light and your justice as the noon day." Psalm 37:5, 6. Some 200 names for Jesus exist in the Bible. For the Patriots, He was, simply, King Jesus. His Name became a battle cry in the church's Great Awakening preceding the American Revolution. The Bible was their Playbook; prayer and fasting their avenue to Divine correction, direction, protection and victory. July 10, 1774 Elbridge Gerry, 5th U.S....
Agriculture producers in Nebraska have earned their standing as world leaders in agriculture through their excellence and tradition of respecting the natural resources with which our state is blessed. No one cares more about the land and water of our state than the farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods depend on careful management of these resources. Unfortunately, top-down overreach from Washington – such as the President Biden's "30 by 30" Executive Order, which created an arbitrary target o...
"I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby." Thus relates David Copperfield in the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Of course, Dickens was a crusader against the exploitation of children. The edge is taken off the depictions of the heartless treatment of children in his fiction, though, by the funny and memorable portrayals of the malefactors, the upward trajectory of the lives of the likes of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, and the...
In recent days, I have begun reading John Barry's book, "Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty." Although published in 2012, Barry tells the story of how the Puritans chose to leave old England to build a plantation on the rocky New England coast of Massachusetts. In England, the Puritans wanted to purify and simplify their church. Hence, the title of Puritans. They wanted a rustic sanctuary, without stained glass windows and gaudy...
"Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Jehovah Sabaoth (Lord of Hosts). A fire goes before Him to burn up His enemies round about." Psalm 97:4, 5 Elbridge Gerry was a wealthy cod fisherman from Marblehead, Massachusetts. He was among the first Founding Fathers to finance a new nation. Because of his wealth, sea going ships and intrepid workmen, Britain's King George III targeted him, directly, with the Tea Stamp Act in 1773, in order to pay for the costly French and Indian War. George...
Everyone has an opinion. When it comes to change, however, it would seem not everyone has a voice. Not one they want to use anyways. It is curious how big and brave people can be from behind a keyboard. Demanding answers, screaming for change but when the need arises for their voices to be heard, it is instead replaced with the sound of crickets. There have been some very reasonable questions being asked in our community regarding a variety of issues within our county. Bullying at the schools,...
First, they came for Roald Dahl. Anyone who thought the politically correct rewriting would stop at the irreverent author of such children's classics as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" was, of course, sadly mistaken. The news that hundreds of changes have been made in Dahl's classics is now followed by word that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, is getting an emergency rewrite as well. This is a very bad idea. For a start, where does it end? There's no limiting...
I believe a major failing of our national education system is the general lack of teaching the historical foundations of our Nation and its governmental system. Even though it is not close to the Fourth of July, I believe it is time to look at the Declaration of Independence that was passed by the fledgling American Congress on July 4, 1776. Let's examine just a few parts of this document and see how they apply to the state of the Union today. The second paragraph makes a concise and logical...
"Come unto Me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," Jesus said. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30. Here is the light and easy life! "If you be willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land," Isaiah 1:19 God is on the 'lookout' for a willing, obedient soul, who will say, "YES, I WILL!" Yes, I will seek Your face. Yes, I will...
We all agree that our kids are our future. In every community across our state, no matter the size, we all want the same thing – a better future for our kids than we had. Our highest priority is to protect our kids and their adolescent minds until they are old enough to discern and make their own decisions. That is why I support Senator Kauth's bill, LB 574, that will keep misinformed parents from allowing their kid to have irreversible, gender-altering surgery. There is a reason why kids in N...
