Guest Columns
Some people never break the posted speed limit, they gingerly seal it in bubble wrap.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who, like nearly everyone, is running for president, presides over the largest and most media-centric city in America.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s detractors are trying to play down the significance of the U.S.-Mexico immigration deal, saying it is largely comprised of actions that Mexico already had agreed to many months ago.
Fifty years ago this summer, Charles Manson went on a killing spree that shocked the nation and was the ghoulish “gold standard” for heinous crimes. While some killers have been more prolific (like the Rev. Jim Jones) and some have been more photogenic (like Ted Bundy), and some have been mo…
WASHINGTON — The American people are sending a pretty clear message to Washington: They are sick and tired of the investigations into President Trump and don’t want Democrats in Congress to impeach him. But the Democrats aren’t listening.
Like most people, I didn’t think much about my Social Security number — until I got a bizarre call from a total stranger.
The Democrats running the House of Representatives have gone insane — and they prove it every day.
During World War II, of the 500-plus MLB players who served, only two young Americans were killed.
PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. — A new United Nations report projecting the extinction of one-eighth of all animal and plant species should rattle the cages of any remaining skeptics regarding climate change and the central role humans have played in Earth’s accelerating destruction.
WASHINGTON — A man who worked in a boxer’s corner in a 1962 match against Cassius Clay, as he still was known, explained why the referee stopped the fight in the fourth round: “Things just went sour gradually all at once.” It can be like that when government dabbles in protectionism.
I hope to be just like my mother one day.
WASHINGTON — If Shakespeare had titled Attorney General William Barr’s appearance on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he would have called it “Much Ado About Nothing.”
With heartbreak, we have watched our friends and neighbors across the states of Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska suffer from the impacts of historic Missouri River flooding, caused by severe winter weather, which included the infamous “bomb cyclone” pattern, leaving behind record river stages, a …
The Trump administration is upping the ante in its war on undocumented immigrants with a new proposal to boot them from public housing — all in the name of helping “the most vulnerable” Americans.
My friend Jack Corrigan, one of the smartest politicos/lawyers I know, saw it right away. He called it “the key punch-pulling passage in the report.” It occurs on page two of volume two, where Robert Mueller says he and his team “determined not to apply an approach that could potentially res…
WASHINGTON — Some government foolishness has an educational value that compensates for its considerable cost.
No wonder Donald Trump was so angry.
WASHINGTON — That Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went on FOX News for a town hall Monday night was controversial among Democrats. As Sanders told hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, “Not everybody thought I should come on this show. Your network does not necessarily have great respect in my …
If you’re serious about being a Christian, Easter (like the other 364 days of the year) can be a very demanding time.
Tax season is upon us, which gives us a choice: Laugh or cry. I choose to laugh.
Joe Biden’s explanatory video in response to stories of his sometimes overly exuberant physicality was well-played. He seemed relaxed, sincere, unscripted and, above all, not supine.
The Social Welfare Board is thankful for the physician help provided to its patients.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages the Missouri River through the Master Manual, a 432-page document that lays out eight congressionally authorized purposes: flood control, river navigation, hydroelectric power, irrigation, water supply, water quality, recreation, and fish and wildlife…
Growing up in Savannah, I learned that school districts are the backbone of our community. One of the most important issues facing our community is the lack of trust between the school district and the public. Now is the time to rebuild that trust.
When the patients started trickling in during the mid-1980s, I admit that I was afraid. I took every precaution that I could when treating my AIDS patients, but of course, I still treated them — it was my duty as a doctor. The medical community didn’t yet know what caused AIDS, much less how…
It is with humility, appreciation and gratitude that I write this column of thanks. My journey as a teacher and coach has truly been a blessing. I can honestly say that I never went to work a day in my life. I was blessed to live my passion! I was able to use a game that I truly love and uti…
When I was a starstruck youth, I watched more than my fair share of televised awards programs; but in my nearly 28 years of wedded bliss, such show-biz soirees have consumed only minuscule amounts of my time.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
The 2018 elections were a wake-up call for many in the R epublican Party about our party’s decreased support among women voters, particularly in suburban areas. Nearly all of the 40 seats that Democrats captured in order to win the U.S. House majority were in suburban districts, and a terrib…
Recently, in a News-Press Ping Poll the question was asked, “Should more resources be used to treat mental health in the St. Joseph Community?” A resounding 86 percent said, yes. They are right.
When I was a tyke, I always freaked out over the possible presence of “cat hairs and goims.” (Why a Tennessee farmboy pronounced “germs” like a hooligan in a 1930s movie set in Brooklyn, I’ll never know.)
Recently, editorialists of the News-Press authored an opinion piece entitled, “Remain cautious on Medicaid expansion.” The editorial concluded by opining that Medicaid expansion will cost too much and that all our legislators need to do is to make our state’s Medicaid system more efficient, …
The death of John McCain has led me to reflect about his similarities with a Missouri state senator.
As the mayor of Weston, Missouri, I believe in small, conservative government so my constituents can lead their lives freely in our beautiful town. The Missouri General Assembly is full of people who also claim to be small-government conservatives, but they sure like to tell us what to do.
To the residents of St. Joseph:
History will record that Eric Greitens announced the end of his governorship in the grand ceremonial office on the second floor of the Missouri Capitol on Tuesday afternoon.
May is designated as Mental Health Awareness Month. At Family Guidance Center, we want to shine a light on mental health all year long.
I recently got a call from a major donor in Missouri politics about a controversial bill that was before the General Assembly in Jefferson City. Sixty percent of my constituents who had contacted me asked me to vote against the bill. This donor found out, and he offered me $35,000 to vote “y…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — I am a proud native of St. Joseph, but for my entire adult life I have lived in Washington, D.C. I span two worlds, with one foot planted in the Midwest of my youth, and another on the East Coast where I work and raise my family.
For those of us living or farming near a river, the threat of flooding always is in the back of our minds. We do our best to prepare for floods and expect the federal government to do the same.
Seat belts save lives. It’s a proven fact, but they must be worn properly. Current law in Missouri requires everyone in the front seat of a passenger vehicle to wear a seat belt.
The recent emphasis by the St. Joseph School District to promote better attendance is laudable. I am pleased to see the improved attendance resulting from the Strive for 5 program.
Timothy Vaughn dutifully cheered the University of Missouri for a decade, sitting in the stands with his swag, two hot dogs and a Diet Coke. He estimates he attended between 60 and 85 athletic events every year — football and basketball games and even tennis matches and gymnastics meets. But…
Missouri shares a border with eight other U.S. states and no foreign countries, but our economic well-being is intricately tied to foreign trade and robust engagement with the world.
Given the uproar over Ivanka Trump’s sitting in for her father at the “adult’s table” at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this summer I’ve been thinking about why it is that we seem so eager to cry “nepotism” where family enterprise is concerned.
We recently enjoyed a vacation to the Northwestern states, where we visited many towns and cities and had the privilege of driving through both business and residential areas that clearly had respect and pride for their communities.
There have been several recent news stories about a study from the Pew Research Center that found a partisan divide regarding the perceived value of colleges and universities. As the executive director of the association of the 15 presidents and chancellors of Missouri’s public universities,…
At Family Guidance Center, we serve nine predominately rural counties. In fiscal year 2016 our staff drove more than 500,000 miles serving people in these counties.
A first step in the right direction is overcoming the stigma of mental illness.
Missouri stands on the brink of prematurely expanding Medicaid managed care statewide at the detriment of very vulnerable patients. It does so through a process that was highly irregular, if not illegal. As is too often true in the Missouri capital, a member of a key legislator’s staff is no…
Editorials
When it comes to caring for veterans, the instinct is to do everything possible to serve those who served us.
Freshmen congresswomen known as “the squad” promote some ill-advised ideas, from the Green New Deal to the elimination of private insurance to reparations for a horrible wrong that occurred more than 150 years ago.
A law mandating a later start to the school year is designed to prop up an important industry in the state.
In a classic scene from “The Shawshank Redemption,” an inmate escapes from a notorious prison through a sewage pipe.
The two library systems that serve St. Joseph experienced a bitter divorce in 2001. We may as well get that out there.
Rural areas have seen factory jobs disappear while farms become ever larger in order to survive.
A few years back, home-improvement shows were devoted to stories of people trying to reduce clutter in their lives.
They pop up every year in the spring, just like flowers.
Go ahead and thank Richard Nixon for helping the U.S. women’s national team bring home the World Cup.
The Fourth of July holiday has come and gone, leaving lots of cleanup and a chance to shoot off a final few fireworks.
St. Joseph was once described as a city large enough to have a homeless population and small enough to know those individuals by name.
The inscription on the front of City Hall declares that the building is intended “for civic uses.”
It was hard to miss the correlation at the St. Joseph Board of Education meeting last month.
Multinational drug companies could learn a thing or two about kratom.
If John Adams had his way, we would be back at work today following cookouts, fireworks and tributes to our nation’s independence earlier in the week.
An estimated 41.4 million Americans are expected to hit the road on the Fourth of July holiday weekend, according to AAA.
It’s hard to believe most fireworks are illegal inside the St. Joseph city limits.
July serves as the lazy dog days of the education beat.
Sometimes, a story is repeated so often that it becomes hard to distinguish if it was ever really true in the first place.
Anyone who wonders why there’s an anti-Washington “drain-the-swamp” mentality needs to look no further than the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
St. Joseph’s citizens and community leaders have a tendency to bemoan the lack of growth in this city, compared to other areas in the state and country.
Opponents of urban trails present a false choice in depicting the issue as one that forces a decision between trail expansion, school sidewalks or some other infrastructure upgrade.
A city is known for what it makes as much as who lives there or, in some cases, who used to live there.
People often say they support immigration with the qualification that “they need to do it the right way, like my family did.”
News coverage took on a sneering tone when President Trump pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — on conservative economist Arthur Laffer.
Advocates of free trade and the Second Amendment face similar hurdles in the court of public opinion.
A summer concert series continues this weekend with more than music featured on Frederick Avenue, just east of Downtown.
Following a rainy spring, last weekend’s glorious weather provided a perfect opportunity to fire up the grill, jump in the pool or just hang out in the backyard.
You can’t blame corrections officers for displaying healthy skepticism about the pay boost provided to these law enforcement professionals who serve in the state prison system.
Somewhere beneath a happy surface of cat photos, selfies and TikTok, danger lurks in the soft underbelly of our interconnected world.
A bicycle rack might be considered the loneliest piece of equipment outside of a school in St. Joseph, or a school in any city, for that matter.
It’s easy to sympathize with a show-no-quarter response to homelessness in St. Joseph. Just give them a one-way bus ticket out of town and let the problem show up on someone else’s doorstep.
When government increases your taxes or fees, its beneficiaries normally have the good sense to tell you it’s for your own good.
he real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.”
In landing two U.S. Department of Agriculture facilities, Missouri and Kansas lawmakers didn’t just prevail over their counterparts in North Carolina and Indiana.
No one intends to build a piece of trashy property, just as no one ever plans to get out of shape or let the car fall apart.
The idea for a Buchanan County Agri-Business Expo Center began as more of a fairgrounds project. This brings up pleasant images of rabbit shows and pie booths in rural settings across the Midwest.
Christopher Wren’s tomb at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London contains a simple plaque with a Latin inscription.
Ida Tarbell earned a reputation as a muckraker for exposés that resulted in the eventual breakup of the Standard Oil Company.
St. Joseph’s form of city government works best when a certain tension exists between the elected council and the appointed manager.
Mayor Bill McMurray resorts to the “fake news” argument while deflecting the issue of crime and his Blue Ribbon Citizen’s Crime Advisory Committee.
Farmers scored a victory last week with new Environmental Protection Agency rules that allow year-round use of gasoline blends that contain 15 percent ethanol.
Maybe we should have seen it coming.
Looking ahead to the 75th anniversary of D-Day, it’s striking how often people reflect on that era with a sense of nostalgia.
Congratulations are in order to Christin Wilson, Zachry Hanlan, Hayley Kruse, Hunter Madison, Alexanaka Nabors and Jakob Palmer.
With apologies to Jesse James and the Pony Express, nothing captures St. Joseph’s fabric more than its self-proclaimed status as tenderloin capital of the world.
In St. Joseph, getting a skeptical voting public to pass a school levy might have been the election equivalent of selling ice to an Eskimo.
Forgive Missourians for feeling as if our state is missing out on the online sales tax party.
Most of us wouldn’t e-mail a check routing number to someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture sweepstakes could be viewed as a Green Acres version of high-stakes economic development.