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Perfection or excellence? You choose

I recently saw this sign stuck on a mirror in a local business: "Remember how good perfect felt? Why don't we do it again?"When I read that, I felt utter revulsion. I wanted to run right out of there and not come back.For me, a recovering control freak, it brought back scenes from years of trying to control everything and everybody so I could have a perfect little world. Through all that, I came to understand that there is no such thing as ''perfect.''Maybe you'll disagree with me because, unlike me, you have been able to get a grip on everything in the universe that threatens to destroy ...

Drugs-n-thugs require decisive action

In America criminals have more rights than law-abiding taxpayers.Last week, the Supreme Court ruled against using drug-sniffing dogs at traffic stops without probable cause. This is a supreme stupidity. In other words, the tool most likely to give law enforcement probable cause to search for illegal drugs can no longer be used without probable cause.What?How much probable cause does the Supreme Court need before they allow the American people to defend our cities and our innocent children against the menace of drugs and thugs?Doesn't the city of Warren have enough probable cause when ...

Does Obama really care?

The "Obamacare" production of so-called "affordable health care act" has saturated the daily news these days. Proving more to be "unaffordable" health insurance, our country is facing serious medical challenges. A growing number of wage-earners, I understand, are losing their private coverage, or being shackled by inflated deductibles and "out of pocket" fees. At the same time, those who are jobless and/or indigent, etc. can go to the ER with a "hangnail" and receive free medical care. There's something wrong with this picture.Does President Obama, and his regime, really care that ...

No change without courage

I have not looked forward to writing today's column. As a member of our community, and as a writer tasked to explore what's happening in our community with a pen, I just cannot in good conscience write about anything but the chaos that has swept across our city for the last two weeks.This is especially hard for me to do. I have spent most of my life living in Trumbull County; but I have spent most of my life living far from Warren. In the security and the seclusion of the suburbs, I grew up believing poverty, sex trafficking, drug dealing, and yes, violence, were not my problem. They ...

Teachers earn high marks

One of the most enduring marketing strategies is the Procter and Gamble claim that Ivory soap is "99 and 44/100 percent pure" which is more than 100 years old. The phrase has become synonymous with a standard of excellence.According to a recent article in the Tribune Chronicle, the state of Ohio can claim a group of professionals who apparently top that high mark. Some 99.5 percent of teachers in our state conduct themselves with professional decorum, with "only about 0.5 percent of the 185,000 licensed educators" being investigated for any type of misconduct.That is great news. I should ...

Do you know where your extra hour is?

Tick, tick, tick.No, it's not my biological clock. That ran down quite some time ago; thank you, Mother Nature.It's the clock ticking down to 2 a.m. Sunday morning, the time we're supposed to get up and turn our clocks back one hour, stopping daylight-saving time in its tracks.So I wonder: What will happen if I don't get up at 2 a.m. to change my clocks? Will the time police show up? And really, how do we make time change anyway?One year, my hometown, New Philadelphia, did refuse to change to DST. There were big perks involved for this school girl when everyone else in Ohio jumped ...