"History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time” is a long standing truism, reaffirmed by people who are unteachable. Not too long ago, I wrote a column claiming victory for the Democrats in the fall but with a note of encouragement for the president. With a historical ...
A pair of recent letters to the editor in The Minot Daily News focused on a topic that municipal governments deal with on a daily basis: Needs vs. wants. In the first letter from two weeks ago, it was noted that in 2016, Minot’s budget was roughly $125.7 million, while the budget for 2020 ...
By being the thirty-eighth state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, the Virginia Legislature recently declared that it had made the amendment a part of the U. S, Constitution. The Amendment was proposed by Congress to guarantee women equal rights and submitted it to the states for ...
In the coming weeks, many North Dakota landowners are going to receive new maps from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS), and they will have 40 days to do something about it. I wanted to take a moment to explain what they are, how they can affect their life, and what they can do about ...
The election of 2020 will be the culmination of 20 years of political chicanery involving the right to vote. North Dakota and the other 49 have been closing election loopholes that don’t exist to exploit the ballot box for political gain. The North Dakota Legislature has made voting more ...
We know firsthand that addiction to drugs and alcohol does not discriminate. In 2018, about 68,000 Americans died from a drug overdose, and an estimated 88,000 die from the effects of alcohol annually in our country. The estimated cost of the opioid crisis alone is $696 billion dollars ...
he City of Minot was afforded an opportunity to travel to West Fargo in August 2019 to see first-hand a project that blends commercial development with low-to-moderate income housing. It was a trip well-worth taking. City Manager Tom Barry, National Disaster Resilience Program Manager John ...
Many states claim to be different, but of all of the states, North Dakota has the distinction of having the flattest power structure. Power is distributed thinly because everybody must have “a say.” Egalitarianism runs to the point of becoming sinful. First, our institutional makeup is ...
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 56 years ago. God placed a dream in him to share with the world. MLK Jr.’s words are very much alive today as they were spoken 56 years ago, as they seem to speak still of our times today. That is what drew me to read his ...
One of the largest and highest profile majors we have at Minot State University is Nursing. It is one of the academic programs about which I receive the most questions and feedback. The nursing field seems to constantly be in the headlines, both across the state and nationally, due to the ...
RFormer Senator Byron Dorgan’s recent book, “The Girl in the Photograph,” is a 196-page indictment of every European-American that set foot in the United States since Plymouth Rock. On the basis of his sweeping evidence, we all belong in jail for crimes against Native-Americans, ...
If you’ve checked the weather forecast for the next 10 days, you know we’re in for a harsh dose of winter reality. We know it’s coming every year; after all, it is winter. Still, the cold, snow, and wind all add up to our annual search for things to do while staying safely out of ...
When former State Representative Eliot Glassheim came to North Dakota in the early 1970s to teach literature at the University of North Dakota, he had three strikes against him: He was from New York. He was liberal. He was Jewish. Any of these could make him a target of conservative ...
The national newspaper crisis became a reality in North Dakota when three weeklies in the southwest corner of the state announced in December that they were folding. Two of the three – the New England Herald and the Adams County Record – were rescued by the quick action of Jill Friesz, ...
"One voice. One mission. One Minot.” That will be the focus of our third annual State of the City on Feb. 6, which will again be held at the Arvel Graving Theatre at Minot’s Magic City Campus. Beginning at 4:45 p.m. with a traveling City Hall that includes department heads and other City ...
One Sunday morning the pastor said that “everyone has a need to belong.” He was confirming God’s earlier statement that it was not good for man to be alone. That profound observation stuck with me because it is so true. However, we have not thought about seriously addressing this ...
According to Heidi Heitkamp, now that Democrats have impeached President Donald Trump, what they really need to do is spend a lot of money on explaining what they just did to the American people. The erstwhile senator has somehow fashioned for herself a post-Senate career playing an expert on ...
If North Dakota was going to emulate President Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, our first chapter would have to be dedicated to the three Burleigh County commissioners who voted to keep the door open for refugees. President Donald Trump authorized local governments to veto the importing of ...
While pondering the potential of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, I think back to my time at the Nixon Library in California. It was in 2008 and I was US Secretary of Agriculture and a member of the team negotiating trade agreements around the world. The subject at hand ...
Do the politicians in Washington, D.C., do anything besides investigate one another? Someone accuses another of outrageous behavior and demands an investigation. Months, or years later, after a bevy of salacious (though often false) leaks to the press, the proceedings usually conclude with ...