There’s lately been talk about Texas saying adios to the good ol’ USA. It’s gone so far that Kyle Biedermann, a twice-elected state representative, has introduced legislation to that end. Fasc…

Like many others, we were caught off-guard by Idaho U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson’s recent announcement of his $33 billion salmon-recovery plan that centers around removing the four dams on the lower…

“The Capitol is not a liquor store.”

With striking clarity, I can remember well my feelings as a new mother struggling through the stages of babyhood with my first child (of four). He is now a hilarious and intelligent 13-year-ol…

Recently, both the Moscow-Pullman Daily News and the Lewiston Tribune printed letters calling for fact checking of columnists and letter writers. The authors of these letters make the argument…

I started my career as a wordsmith and am winding down as I began. In between, I researched environmental impacts and taught English in China. I pay attention to words, scientific or literary …

A couple of weeks ago, Texas lawyer Rod Ponton appeared before Judge Roy Ferguson’s virtual Judicial District Court in Texas as an adorable, little cat. It was a “faux paw” viewed around the w…

I would argue from the second half of the 20th century to present, man has become the freest to travel compared to anyone else in the history of mankind.

Now what? Will we soon be witnessing criminal charges and trials? Will he challenge the election’s results two years from now? Will he try to run four years from now? Let’s hope, in the last c…

More than anything else, the Republican Party needs a good divorce lawyer right now because it is riven with irreconcilable differences. For anyone outside the party’s big tent, it’s a little …

Thrice in my life I have been so angry that I’ve literally seen stars.

Until recently, leftists championed the motto “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” No longer. We have seen antifa’s no platforming strategy morp…

There’s a certain desperation in being an op-ed columnist lately. Advocating for anything that isn’t locked down in a left or right mindset seems to be a hopeless task. And that’s too bad — it…

When I passed 60, I took up gardening which I understood to be an avocation appropriate to my age and gender. As a tiller of raised beds, I came to understand the benefits and risks of cross-p…

For a long time, I believed it was unfortunate in our culture that we would expect “politics and religion” to be off-limits topics at the holidays or other social gatherings. I felt strongly t…

There is no such thing as society; there are just individual men and women— Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Given current trends, it will take 50 years for women to reach parity among full professors in the United States. Let that sink in a moment. In these United States, it will take 50 years to eq…

In 1697, a 20-year-old man was hanged in Edinburgh for blasphemy. Authorities “wanted his death to serve as a warning to other would-be dissidents.” In 1983 a 15-year-old Iranian girl, Mona, w…

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s never too soon to think about what sorts of gifts to bestow upon your “beloved.” “Beloved” is a loose term. Too often, Valentine’s Day is asso…

GameStop is being called the Blockbuster of the video game world. As more people download games there is a smaller need to have a physical disc or cartridge. That means the need to buy, sell a…

Despite what some in the Idaho Legislature might think, we are still in the middle of a global pandemic. Now is not the time to be making decisions without careful consideration of the possibl…

Shortly after the riots on Jan. 6, several senators took to the floor to excoriate the mob for actions no one had dared to take since 1814, when British general Robert Ross captured Washington…

I find myself wishing that parts of the South had won their right to recede from the Union. Good riddance! This applies when they elect people to Congress like Marjorie Taylor Green. I find it…

Some of Nature’s rhythms are eternal, such as the sun rising in the east, the phases of the moon and a high tide running to fill the void of a low tide.

I attended a ranger program recently dealing with “leave no trace.” The ranger showed a picture of rock art, or “ancestral inscriptions” as archaeologists often refer to the practice.

Years ago I sat in a room full of doctors with an unsolvable problem.

Partisan thinking leads one to ridicule the opposing party while dismissing the same faults within his own. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more evident than Democrats calling for the blood of those…

No question about it — it’s been an exhausting four years under the presidency of Donald Trump. And here’s the thing — while the new boss ain’t the same as the old boss, if anyone thinks that …

Community leaders from across Idaho have joined together to launch an effort called Imagine Idaho. This effort is aimed at increasing awareness of the importance of broadband throughout our st…