Breaking News

Local Commentaries

Feeling Drained?

1+2=3, 3-2=1. Both of these are considered rather elementary equations as a reference to how one can add or subtract a value directed by which mathematical symbol is being applied. In a similar manner, life is a metaphor of “additions” and “subtractions” that shape the world around us by our individual contributions; symbolizing our true values through our positive or negative expressions. Let’s take this a step further and incorporate a plumbing reference for levity and clarity, where you’re either a faucet (positively) pouring value into the world or a drain taking it ...

Big Time Sports On The Big Screen

The Masters Golf Tournament this year was a doozy. For us golf junkies, the Big Kahuna of the season’s contests was incredibly exciting, especially for Rory McIlroy fans. I joined that fan club about 17 years ago when he was a new name on the PGA Tour. Rory (he lets me call him by his first name) is an up-from-childhood player like Tiger Woods. His dad bought him plastic clubs at age two and he never stopped swinging. I didn’t realize until recently that he was an only child born to working-class parents. Both of them worked second jobs, hardly seeing each other, so their boy ...

Thomas Celebrates 250th Anniversary

AUSTIN, Texas—The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is at hand. America needs history-rooted expositions of founding ideas to celebrate this semiquincentennial. It’s also called the bisesquicentennial, sestercentennial, or quarter millennium. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has ably provided such an exposition. You, faithful reader of this column, will recall the principle that in America, government has only those powers that We the People surrendered to government in the first place. This is the default setting. It’s like the default settings on ...

Getting Used To Getting Old

I think that you have to be in your 80’s before you get used to getting old. It takes a while. So, in that respect, I have arrived. Every morning, at around 6 a.m., when I limp into Hogan’s Hut to get the paper and the staff says: “Good morning, Mr. Kidder!”—I realize that my gait and gray hair have given me seniority. It is a part of getting used to being old. Of course, when I meet with old friends there is also that constant reminder. Someone is getting a new knee, someone else is getting used to their new hip, others are seeing an oncologist or orthopedist for ...

Differing View On State Migration Comments

The March 28, 2026 commentary, from Assemblyman Molitor, citing statistics explaining his reasoning on people moving, from the State of New York is flawed. He is not telling the whole story. In selecting only statistics which support his view, he misleads his constituents. It appears the “statistics” quoted by Molitor, came directly from City Journal, which is a policy magazine and website published by The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank based in New York City. MediasBiasFactCheck.com gives City Journal a Right Bias rating, Right being ...

Surprising Truths About America’s Tax History

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Taxes, for instance, have been changing and staying the same ever since Reagan and the 1980s: They’ve been heaven for corporations and the rich, purgatory or worse for everybody else. Now comes a groundbreaking book that looks back not just decades but centuries. It’s Vanessa A. Williamson’s The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. The surprises never stop coming. Surprise No. 1, the Boston Tea Party. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that taxes were the cause. Not so; the Sons ...