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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The Sun-Telegraph series on what it is to be each denomination is finished and I want to take a moment to thank every one of the Pastors, Father and Reverend who gave me a piece of their day – before I finish out the series with what it is to believe as I do in this week’s column. I appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for helping me make that series as successful as it was, the talks with all of you impacted me a great deal. I have to say I am very proud of the turnout especially since I was told not to get my hopes up – somet... Full story
Two weeks ago I saw Steven Spielberg's recent movie, Lincoln, and came away impressed. Sally Fields did an admirable job playing Mary Todd Lincoln, and Tommy Lee Jones played Thaddeus Stevens, but it was Daniel Day-Lewis, playing Abraham Lincoln, who was mesmerizing, riveting. It was if I was watching the real Abraham Lincoln, with all of his diffidence, hesitations, awkward mannerisms, ugliness, and squeaky voice fully displayed, with warts and beard and over-sized ears. Critics agree that Day-...
Recently, a reader wanted to know whether I was aware that Creators Syndicate, which distributes my column, identifies me as a “liberal” on its website. Is this really the first thing you want readers to know about you? she wondered. Her intentions were kind. I assured her I’m fine with it. I already had been a columnist for five years when, in 2008, Creators started identifying all of us by our politics to give newspaper clients a better idea of who we are. At first, I bristled. I was afraid the label would alienate conservative readers who t...
It isn’t often that you get reading suggestions from a United States senator, but that’s what happened this past weekend for those who attended the National Review Institute’s summit meeting in Washington, D.C. The three-day conclave, part election post-mortem and part revival meeting (that is, reviving conservatism and America), featured a bracing dose of conservative intellectuals along with activists, campaign professionals and office holders. Newly minted Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke in his characteristic fashion — fluidly without...
Most people have some sort of brain capacity to recall most events or things that they have to do in a given day. I am not one of those people. If you are like me you can walk from one room of your house to another and in those few short steps and have already forgotten why in the world you even got off the couch. Granted I also have just “brain farts” sometimes where I can be searching the house for a good five minutes before realizing that the cell phone that I am frantically looking for is in my hand. Sometimes I question my sanity at tim... Full story
Freight trains carry 1.8 billion tons of cargo on more than 138,000 miles of track across the United States each year. It is amazing when you think about the amount of force railroad lines withstand to keep this massive industry on track. Without those parallel strips of steel, relatively small when compared to their burden, there would be nothing to guide the massive trains to their destination. The federal budget is a bit like those tracks. Without them, there is no guide for federal spending. They provide the direction needed to ensure...
One of the most basic functions of government is to pass a budget – to decide how to use tax dollars based on the needs of the nation. The House of Representatives has passed a budget every year since Republicans won a majority, but the House cannot act alone. The Senate, which has not passed a budget in nearly four years, must also act to address our long-term deficit and debt. The budget serves as a policy outline establishing guidelines for appropriations and other spending and revenue bills through the rest of the year. Federal law r...
As I write this column, I am getting ready to cut the cord. In a day or so, I am gathering my courage, picking up the phone and telling my cable provider to go jump in a lake. We live in a hilly area where TV signals don’t get all that far, so without cable, we get one station and only once in a while. Three years ago, we upgraded to one of those package deals where the cable company provides all of our electronic entertainment needs for one low, low monthly price. Because it was such a low, low price, we signed up for a whole slew of movie c...
Running a daily newspaper, or any newspaper for that matter, offers opportunities that make the job very enjoyable. It also enhances, or at least it has mine, the number of experiences I can count in my life. Thursday night here in Sidney I had the pleasure of attending the Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet. The rewards were many – as I was able to see the smiles, hugs and handshakes as guests arrived – and I was joined by four staff members here at the table and for the evening. I watched intently as the mc for the night... Full story
The Republican Party is picking up the pieces. Speaking of the ticket’s loss for the first time since the election, Rep. Paul Ryan noted that many voters “don’t think or know that we have good ideas” on fighting poverty and “helping people move up the ladder of life.” It’s not surprising that Ryan, who got his start working for Jack Kemp and William Bennett at Empower America, sees the world this way. Though it’s a total secret to members of the press and the Democratic Party, conservative intellectuals have been grappling with the problems of...
With little discussion or fanfare, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted the ban on women in combat that has been in effect for as long as there has been a U.S. military. Feminists and some women serving in the military are applauding the move as a victory for equal rights. They claim that justice requires nothing short of opening all positions to females, regardless of the consequences to combat effectiveness, unit cohesion, or military readiness, factors whose importance they minimize in any event. What is perhaps most striking about...
Skies were overcast, and the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees in Washington on Monday when President Barack Obama took the oath of office and began his inaugural address. Given his own cool reserve and his first-term penchant for pursuing a tepid, middle-right governing agenda, I didn’t expect to get much warmth from him this go ‘round. I was surprised. In these major speechifying moments, Obama’s rhetoric has always soared, but this time his agenda and political resolve did, for he seemed to have reached deep within himself and found an FD...
So many times during Hillary Clinton’s testimony this week before Congress, I wanted to place one hand on the shoulder of every teenage girl in America, point at the TV screen with the other hand and whisper: This. This is how it’s done. Secretary of State Clinton showed up to answer tough and sometimes ridiculous questions regarding the deadly September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. In the process, she offered a tutorial for today’s young women. Key points: 1) When a man asks you a question and then refus...
He swore his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. He has asked to give the State of the Union address on Lincoln’s birthday. He rode to Washington in 2009 on a train route similar to Lincoln’s in 1861. He has compared his critics to Lincoln’s critics. He confides to admirers that he likes to read the handwritten Gettysburg Address that hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom. Barack Obama is inviting the world to compare him not just to good presidents but to the greatest in American history. There can be majesty in invoking past presidents and the...
Distance. According to my iPhone — which is sitting on my office desk this morning — from my present location I am currently a car travel of 21 hours and 35 minutes from my previous home in Rochester, Wash. This calculates to an approximate distance of 1,360 miles. With technology these days, distance seems to be less of an obstacle when trying to communicate with the ones you care about. A letter delivered on horseback is now not the only way to receive messages from your loved ones. Heck, I’d love to see that one of these days. Instead we ha... Full story
Sometimes you can’t help but wonder about the media – main stream, bloggers, radical – you take your pick. I can’t help but quit thinking about the overwhelming media coverage of a couple things in the past few weeks. I’d have to go back first to the media fumbling of the ball on the Newtown, Conn., shooting. From the very first reporters on the ground to the final piece filed from that death scene the media continuously fumbled the ball . . . and the facts. I was in my recliner when the first news scrolled across the bottom of the televisio... Full story
When a rash of wildfires broke out across Nebraska last year, volunteer firefighters traveled as far as 350 miles to assist. Many of them left their families and businesses for days on end to fight blazes that blackened more than 300 thousand acres across the State. Crews went through vacation days and midnight oil in unimaginable conditions to protect nearby communities and valuable grassland now even more coveted by ranchers in search of feed for livestock. The display of selflessness was echoed by people in the local and neighboring communit...
Look out, the “fixers” are coming. Top corporate chieftains and Wall Street gamblers want to tell Washington how to fix our national debt, so they’ve created a front group called “Fix the Debt” to push their agenda. Unfortunately, they’re using “fix” in the same way your veterinarian uses it — their core demand is for Washington to spay Social Security, castrate Medicare and geld Medicaid. Who’s behind this piece of crude surgery on the retirement and health programs that most Americans count on? Pete Peterson, for one. For years, this Wall St...
This past Sunday night, we faced a bit of a dilemma in our house. The English drawing room, cucumber sandwich and Earl Grey tea sipping drama, “Downton Abbey,” was scheduled to return for its third season, while at the same time, on another channel, was the dirty, dumb hillbilly reality show, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo!” Halloween special. My wife was torn. I did not have a dog in this hunt. My wife controls the remote, so for the most part we watch TV shows where women try on wedding dresses, couples go apartment shopping and housewi...
The toughest thing to do is usually the best thing for a person. These are words I often refer to when I have a very hard decision to make, or am going through a tough time where it would be oh so easy to move backwards instead of forward. For example, I have now been smoke free for 6 weeks and 1 day, a very, very tough thing to accomplish, especially considering this is the second time I have put this much effort into quitting. I say that, knowing many reading this will say, ‘but you have children, didn’t you put that much effort into it when... Full story
The Supreme Court issued its controversial Roe v. Wade decision, which forced states to legalize abortion on January 22, 1973. Rather than ending the debate, the pro-life movement has continued and made some progress over the last 40 years. However, much work remains to protect the sanctity of innocent life, and I have worked with my colleagues in both parties to bring pro-life legislation to the floor and advance the rights of the unborn. Perhaps the best reflection of the growing pro-life movement is the success of the Annual March for Life...
January is “National Train Your Dog Month,” an activity that can lead to a surprising outcome. In 2011 a writer named Susan Orleans published a book on Rin-Tin-Tin. In the book she tells of an American soldier fighting in France during World War I who adopted a German Shepherd pup, brought it back to California, trained it, and the dog appeared in 23 silent films for Warner Brothers, becoming the most famous dog in the world and the number one box office star. In the 1960’s another Rin-T...
A few days after 6-year-old Noah Pozner was gunned down at Newtown’s Sandy Hook School, his mother, Veronique, gave an interview of searing clarity. Journalist Naomi Zeveloff, in a column for The Jewish Daily Forward, described the hardest part of her interview with Pozner. I don’t often provide lengthy excerpts, but this defies paraphrasing: “(Veronique) felt that (Noah’s) body had suffered too many indignities already; she was adamant that he not be autopsied. She wanted him to be buried with a Jewish prayer shawl and with a clear stone w...
Words are powerful. Some people think that one can only understand the true power of words if they like to read or write. But words are not saved for bookworms or novelists - words are for everyone. Words are a part of everyday language. The way someone uses words, what words they use and how they say them can tell a story about them. Just by listening to someone speak one can infer things like where they are from, where they have been, sometimes their level of education and sometimes even the social cliques they associate themselves with. Hobb... Full story
Now the other shoes begin to drop. Voters knew in November that many of the promises Obama made in 2008 had been broken. The economy had not revived as he had promised it would (“or we’ll be talking about a one-term proposition”). He has not “changed the tone in Washington” – except for the worse. He didn’t prevent lobbyists from holding positions in his administration. He didn’t cut the deficit in half; he increased it radically. But voters apparently decided that the president deserved credit for good intentions. How long will that indul...
