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Problems outpacing solutions, ideas
To: U.S. Reps. Adrian Smith, Don Bacon, Mike Flood From: Nebraskans Re: We have a list. We read where the poverty rate for children in America more than doubled in the last year. Perhaps you read that, too. At least we hope so. Thousands of those kids live in Nebraska. According to most reports, allowing […]
Dignity, statesmanship from diamonds open and closed
Among my most prized possessions is a faded, white T-shirt. Here’s why: Being in the professional writing game for a considerable stretch, you eventually meet people you normally wouldn’t without a notebook and pen handy. Some of them are truly impressive: brilliant, genial and altogether human. Others … well … not so much. Populating my […]
Seinfeldian truths play well only on TV
“Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie… if you believe it….” —George Costanza, Philosopher and Architect *** As post-truth America edges toward the Costanzafication of its public institutions and body politic, we sit idly by at our own peril. Rumors of the death of evidence are no longer rumors. Belief has replaced facts, which, as […]
Border problem being solved in the wrong place
You’ll know us by the company we keep. Which, for some Nebraskans, may strain incredulity given the crowd with whom we seem to be hanging. To wit: Gov. Jim Pillen is now apparently palling around with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. That’s palling around as in spending a couple million bucks from the state’s saddlebags for […]
Skip the broad brush when painting journalism
In an unintended sequel to the 2004 book “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” part of the Sunflower State’s justice system has run afoul of the First Amendment. Armed with a warrant signed by a local judge and probably in violation of shield laws, police officers and county sheriffs raided a small-town weekly newspaper and the […]
Misusing words drains them of meaning
The last two Nebraska governors, whose political symbiosis has been well-documented, also share an intense dislike for critical race theory, or CRT, the ill-defined, often misunderstood premise generally meaning that institutional racism is baked into our systems and policies. See red-lining, Tuskegee (airmen and experiments) and a recent rash of voter suppression efforts for details. […]
At a hard, sharp crossroads in the dog days
For history to repeat itself, we must first recognize that it’s being made. The dog days find us awash in the momentous and, as usual, the mundane. While the former will surely fill pages of future history books, differentiating it from the latter is crucial to the writing of a true American narrative. That said, […]
Photo ID lessons are valuable for voters
If a learning curve ever needed guardrails, it is Nebraska’s new voter photo ID law, which will be in effect during next May’s primary. The timing gives voting Nebraskans about a school year to master the material derived from the electorate’s decision to change how we exercise our most powerful civic duty. This just in: […]
Truth should be the only standard
Among Nebraska’s social studies standards are the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dred Scott Decision and other key components of the country’s original sin: slavery. But names and dates and details of our history only tug at the fabric of the nation’s narrative. What’s needed for a fuller understanding of our story are perspective, consequence and […]
Time to add climate to weather conversations
An editor once told me if I ever filed a “turgid think piece on the weather,” he would know I was irrevocably out of ideas. Sounds about right. That said, the next 725 words or so are not solely about the weather. They are about climate … and change. Nebraskans rarely pass up a chance […]
Past neither simple, easy for millions
The etymology of “nostalgia” combines the Greek words for home and pain. Many of us see nostalgia as just that: homesickness for a time past. But for millions of Americans, what we might like to call the good old days weren’t so good. A number of them let Nikki Haley, presidential candidate and former South […]
Upping our room-reading game
I am curious as to what ever happened to scruples in public life. Anybody know? You remember scruples: Stand-up people, the do-the-right-thing-regardless crowd? Maybe my naivete is showing, but I swear scruples used to be a thing. They — or lack of them — came to mind when I read that Italian authorities found the […]