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Minn. scandal is fraud warning hard to ignore

National Columnists

Growing national outrage over Minnesota’s welfare fraud is justified, but not because of where it took place or because it implicates members of any immigrant community. It’s much more than a “Minnesota” story. The outrage is justified because Americans are finally getting a concrete look at what happens when pushing public money out the door matters more than verifying the eligibility of the recipients, confirming services were delivered or, ultimately, being a good steward of taxpayers’ money. Since 2022, investigators have uncovered a staggering amount of fraud, ...

PETA sign not appropriate for public place in Minot

Letters to the Editor

Patricia Marquard, Minot There are many reasons why the PETA sign (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) should not be placed in a public area in Minot. First of all the statement, “Get Over (That Meat Addiction)! is a false statement. It categorizes meat, a source of protein and essential vitamins with nicotine alcohol, drugs and other addictive substances. Most doctors would agree that eating meat is not a disease and hence not an addiction. Secondly, PETA is an out of state private enterprise that harasses farmers, cattle ranchers, property owners, hunters, and would ...

National parks face staffing, financial challenges

Letters to the Editor

Lillian Crook, Bismarck I have been in love with National Parks for as long as I have conscious memory. Back in the 1960s & 1970s, my family camped in countless National Parks. At this point in life, I have visited every National Park except the two, and I intend to visit those two. Later in my life, I got to work for the National Park Service, at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only National Park named after an American President. By that time, I knew every single trail and much about the flora and fauna of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and quite a bit about the history ...

Reliance on ‘mind’ assaults U.S. Constitution

National Columnists

In a scene in Robert Bolt’s famous play “A Man for All Seasons,” about the treason trial of St. Thomas More, More argues with the attorney general of Wales about the law. The attorney general says he’d cut down all the laws in England to get to the Devil. More reminds him that the laws were written to protect us from those who’d cut them down, because, More asks, when the Devil turns round and seeks you, where would you hide, the laws having been flattened? Answer: nowhere. The recent statement of President Donald Trump in an interview with The New York Times that on the ...

When fathers fail, birth rates collapse

National Columnists

Where are the babies? Social conservatives keep asking what’s happened as the U.S. fertility rate crashes to its lowest level ever. But the answer should be another question: Where are the fathers? And by fathers, we do not mean men who merely spread their seed and then take off, but men who hang around and provide moral and financial support to their children. The common but wrong answer is that it has simply become too expensive to raise children: If you just bring down the prices of things then family life will become more attractive to young couples. This is the affordability ...

I’ve got addiction down to a tea

National Columnists

The advice to “Write drunk, edit sober” is often attributed (probably incorrectly) to the hard-drinking Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Here’s my own riff on that advice. I could not have written five novels or 150 columns without swilling my beverage of choice between sentences. No, not bourbon, not Scotch, not absinthe. Just plain old tea. What gasoline is to an internal combustion engine under a car’s hood, tea is to the writing engine inside my skull. It keeps me chugging along. I have a friend who wrote two terrific novels years ago. Then he ...