Columns

River of worry in this divorce

Each spring and summer, when the Mississippi begins to rise, we start to hear from folks who think it will change course into the Atchafalaya, flooding half of south Louisiana.

Put off tax payments until 2021

All presidents must deal with things they did not expect FDR had the Great Depression and World War II. Kennedy had the Cuban Missile Crisis. George H. W. Bush had Saddam Hussein. And Donald Trump has had COVID-19. Despite what critics say, Trump has responded well to the coronavirus pandemic.

Consumers, do we really need all those choices?

Dear pandemic-battered readers, As you try adapting to the New Normal, just hope no diehards are waiting to confuse you with a plethora of ADDITIONAL configurations.

Stop setting victims of discrimination against each other

On Twitter the other day someone did what a lot of people have been doing lately: Comparing levels of oppression. In this case, it was all about the Philadelphia Inquirer’s decision not to use the term “Washington Redskins” in future columns about the “Team Formerly Known as the Washington Redskins.

Defund police movements miss the big picture

In case you missed it, 106 people were shot in Chicago last weekend. That’s not a typo — 106. If mainstream news organizations still covered the news, instead of only the news that serves or refutes an agenda, we might have heard more.

Spewing oil caught everyone’s eye

Oil fever struck the Louisiana prairies with a vengeance in the summer of 1902, when the Southern Number Four well showed, in the words of the Jennings Daily Record, that it “now appears that a gusher can be secured … just as often as a hole is put into the ground at the proper depth.

Beware the digital KGB roaming the streets

Social media has given everyone with an opinion the power of both anonymity and number. In the past, you could clutch your pearls in one hand and write a scathingly brilliant Letter to the Editor in another.