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Don’t excuse political violence

A society that begins to excuse political violence should not be surprised when political violence multiplies. Once you create a moral framework in which violence is not merely understandable but righteous — once you argue that certain institutions are so corrupt, so “murderous,” that the people who participate in them deserve to be killed — you are no longer condemning violence. You are licensing it. And when that cultural permission structure meets a criminal justice system increasingly designed to favor perpetrators over victims, the results are predictable: more criminals ...

Do not use bison as political pawns

My sister Erica and I returned to Montana just a few days after the Bureau of Land Management revoked grazing permits for bison. American Prairie, a nonprofit working to create one of the largest nature reserves in the United States, was the target of that decision. Erica and I bounced along two-track roads in our Toyota RAV4 rental, hoping to get close to the American Prairie bison herd. It wasn’t as easy as one might think. What makes American Prairie different is scale. American Prairie has roughly 1,000 bison total. On the Sun Prairie section where we visited, approximately ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To the Ohio Department of Development’s Brownfield Remediation Program for awarding the Trumbull County Land Reutilization Corp. (Land Bank) a $635,000 grant to renovate the former downtown Warren YMCA. The project to transform the 1928 YMCA building into a mixed-use development facility rises as a key component in the city’s mammoth $150 million downtown redevelopment plan. When completed, the renovated space will feature 43 residential units, seven townhomes, commercial space and a fitness center. That project, which already has received about $5.5 million in historic tax ...

Add muscle to Ohio laws on sexual assault

Most Ohioans likely will find little solace in knowing the official scope of rape and sexual violence in the Buckeye State has declined ever so slightly in recent years. According to a recent report from the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, the statewide sexual assault crime rate dropped 4.3% between 2016 and 2023 in Ohio. That slight ray of hope, however, is completely overshadowed by other data that clearly illustrates sexual violence remains a painful, powerful and destructive cancer on our state. Consider: ● The Incident-Based Reporting System within the Ohio Office ...

Lesson in economics for AOC

I am not an economist, but I do have some personal experience with the principles of economics and the rules that allow Americans to prosper while becoming more self-reliant and less dependent on government. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., aka AOC, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, graduated from Boston University cum laude, and then returned to the Bronx and worked as a bartender and waitress to help her mother fight foreclosure of their home. Nothing wrong with that, but her life experience apparently has taught her little. In some recent comments she claimed that ...

What’s so bad about a stable population?

Back in 1969, President Richard Nixon warned Congress against the rapid growth of the American population: “When future generations evaluate the record of our time, one of the most important factors in their judgment will be the way in which we responded to population growth.” If the American headcount continued rising at the current rate, Nixon said, the nation’s “social supplies — the capacity to educate youth, to provide privacy and living space, to maintain the processes of open, democratic government — may be grievously strained.” Since 1969, America’s ...