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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"A good name is better to be chosen than great riches; by humility and honor of the LORD are riches and honor and [eternal] life." Proverbs 22:1, 4 The Bible declares, Jeremiah 29:11, that when God has a job to be done, He has a baby born! We know their names even: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. Moses, David, Daniel, Jesus, Peter, James, John and Paul – even you, even me. Father never changes. We are given a journey of preparation and spiritual growth to arrive at the crucial moment when we m... Full story
This year's legislative session has been unlike any other. Because a small group of State Senators decided to filibuster every bill, it has affected the way we do business this year at the State Capitol in Lincoln. In the Army soldiers are taught to improvise in order to solve difficult problems when under fire by the enemy. In the State Legislature, legislators sometimes have to use rules they are not ordinarily accustomed to using in order to get the business of the State done, and that is pre... Full story
This week, I signed LB77 Constitutional Carry into Nebraska law. This bill fulfills the promise I made to voters to uphold our Second Amendment rights and the ability of all law-abiding Nebraskans to defend themselves. This law also affirms the rights promised by the Nebraska and United State constitutions. Article 1, Section 1, of the Nebraska Constitution states, "All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty,... Full story
Last week, the U.S. Senate passed my resolution protecting truckers and consumers. The legislation would overturn a Biden administration rule that makes emissions standards stricter for heavy-duty vehicles like trucks. This aggressive rule, released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), would force truckers to purchase new, expensive equipment to abide by a radical climate agenda - which would burden our economy as a whole. The EPA's own economic analysis found that the emissions... Full story
My first venture into the business world was in the summer of 1957 as an 8 year old. Dad brought home an old rusty platen press from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. I can't properly describe a platen press. It was foot treadle powered and hand fed. You can find pictures of them on the web. The pressman (me) stands in front of the press, grabs a big flywheel on the left side of the press and gives it a hard pull. This puts it into motion. The next step is to take a sheet of paper, slip it into... Full story
Father God, in His simplicity, has ordained "As long as the earth remains, seed, time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer and daylight shall not cease." Genesis 8:22. Harvesting means taking seed out of the barn, planting at the correct time, cultivating, fertilizing and applying the sickle! Man has his part (Mark 4:26-29) and Father's recipe works on time, every time. Unfortunately, many approach seed sowing, both spiritual and natural, as an intellectual exercise. Prayer is made,... Full story
This past week I listened to Craig Wortmann's book, What's Your Story: Using Stories to Ignite Performance and Be More Successful. Craig encourages readers to place their stories into a matrix of sixteen cells, four columns by four rows. He identifies four columns, top to bottom: success, failure, fun, and legends. A success story is how a project succeeded. A failure story is how a project failed. A fun story is a joke. A legend story is a once-upon-a-time story, that of a hero. The idea of a m... Full story
Last week the Nebraska State Legislature began debate on LB 562, which is the priority bill of Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, NE. LB 562 is the Adopt the E-15 Access Standard Act. The bill requires gasoline filling stations to offer E-15 gasoline at half of their pumps within five years and offers grants to filling stations to upgrade their pumps to accommodate E-15 gasoline. E-15 gasoline is a mixture of gasoline and ethanol where the percentage of ethanol in the blend never exceeds 15 percent. The... Full story
"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the good treasure of his heart a man brings forth good things ... for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." Matthew 12:34-37 Words are spiritual containers with an expected end, Genesis 1. Words contain blessing or cursing depending on our attitude when we speak. We can sow (speak) mercy, forgiveness, hope, enthusiasm, or choose to gripe and complain. A thought sows an action, an action (saying... Full story
“(3) Any county, city, or village ordinance, permit, or regulation in violation of subsection (2) of this section is declared to be null and void.” This is part of the language in a new piece of legislation currently working its way through to the governor’s desk in Lincoln. This language intentionally nullifies our ability to govern at a county and city level and simply pass the power to a state level to legislate more laws in Lincoln that we then must live by on a day-to-day basis. The subject of the new law is something I actually suppo... Full story
Last week the Nebraska State Legislature advanced LB 626, which is commonly known as the Nebraska Heartbeat Act. This bill would limit most abortions to the sixth week of pregnancy when heartbeats are normally detected within developing babies. The primary intention of the bill is to put strict limitations on abortions which are performed for the convenience of the mother, rather than for medical reasons. On January 6, 2023 Medical News Today, published an article entitled, "When does a fetus... Full story
You don't know what's in the indictment. That was the line that progressives repeatedly threw at conservatives dubious about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case over the last couple of weeks. Well, we've seen the unsealed indictment, and we still don't know the other crime besides falsifying business records that's being alleged, because Bragg didn't specify it in a shocking prosecutorial failure and abuse of the process. What will be the new talking point? You don't know what Bragg... Full story
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... Full story
"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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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,... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
"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... Full story
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... Full story
