Columns

Do you have a favorite heat wave story?

Much of the nation is experiencing a prolonged heat wave, so of course your humble columnist counterintuitively conjures up WARM MEMORIES to comfort himself.

A look back at President Nixon’s All-Stars

During a normal Major League Baseball season, by mid-July fans would be anticipating the annual All-Star Game. But in 2020, COVID-19, the great killjoy, has forced the game’s cancellation, the first time since 1945 when World War II travel restrictions interfered and no players were selected.

Are you fed up with anonymous sources, too?

What spoils even more evening meals than robocalls?

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.

A reason opinions on Confederate statues changed so quickly

What you think about removing Confederate statues has less to do with your opinions about race and more with how you perceive the motivation behind removing them in the first place.