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Justice Coney Barrett is not a DEI hire

Justice Coney Barrett is not a DEI hire

Mar 13, 2025

These days, political parody is next to impossible, because politics is so absurd. Case in point: This quote, “Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee,” is from a post from someone on the right side of the political spectrum. Barrett had just weighed in on the wrong side of a Supreme Court decision, according to this non-lawyer. That was far from the only social media backlash that came Barrett’s way. This one just had the classlessness to use a photo of Barrett’s family – including her two adopted children from Haiti as supposed evidence of the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” point. Presumably, Barrett being a woman might be another DEI box-check. Considering Barrett has shown a commitment to excellence in her profession, that does suggest a little misogyny. Is that what unites us now?

Courts to determine the extent of power

Courts to determine the extent of power

Mar 12, 2025

BROWNVILLE, Maine – “See you in court.” Those four mumbled words have set in motion more than 100 legal challenges that have been issued to fight the initiatives of the president’s first eight weeks in office.

Murphy plays leading role in response

Murphy plays leading role in response

Mar 07, 2025

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy is one of the Democrats urging his party to more aggressively resist President Donald Trump across a broad range of issues. “Mr. Murphy has seemed to be everywhere all at once since Inauguration Day,” wrote The New York Times recently, “staging a loud and constant resistance to Mr. Trump at a time when Democrats are struggling to figure out how to respond to him.”

MAGA is fighting a war on free speech

Mar 06, 2025

In 1791, the nation’s founders ratified the First Amendment to the Constitution. It would come to offer protections in the new nation essentially never seen before: the right to ask things of and to criticize the government; to express opinions, popular or not; to assemble peacefully; to practice diverse religious beliefs; and to have a free press that publishes information without fear of censorship or retribution.

David M. Shribman

Where Dvorak found music in the air

Mar 05, 2025

SPILLVILLE, Iowa – Here, the fields of corn and soybeans go on forever, and here the road into town makes incongruous turns in a territory whose byways are defined by 90-degree angles. Here, in the mere course of a magical summer 132 years ago, a community, a composer and classical music were transformed.

Thankful for property renovation work

Mar 01, 2025

Dear Editor: On behalf of my husband and myself, we would like to say “thank you” to the City Council, Toby Anders, Johnny and Tina Dixon, and their crew for the work put into the properties of 405, 405.5 and 407 S. 10th St.

The ‘fire first, figure it out later’ strategy

Feb 27, 2025

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been rapidly firing federal workers with little consideration for which ones are critical to government functioning. So now, the Energy Department is scrambling to rehire people abruptly let go from the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to explain why 400 staffers were let go mere days after one of the deadliest airplane crashes in U.S. history. And the Agriculture Department is attempting to bring back people fired despite being part of the effort to stop avian flu, which has decimated chicken farms and sent egg prices soaring.

David M. Shribman

Re-entry takes on a whole new meaning

Feb 26, 2025

All over America that Friday in November 1963, college football teams boarded airliners for their Saturday games. They took off in one country, where John F. Kennedy was president and where optimism and idealism were in the air, and some hours later they landed in another country, where Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the country was in a spasm of grief.

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