Breaking News

Letters To The Editor

Keeping kids safe online takes more than law enforcement

As sheriff of Marquette County, I've learned that some of the most devastating crimes don't begin with a knock at the door. They begin with a notification. A message from someone pretending to be another teenager. A social media request that seems harmless. A conversation on a gaming platform. Within days, that contact can turn into manipulation, extortion, exploitation or worse. Our own community has lived this reality. The sextortion scheme that claimed the life of a Marquette teenager was a heartbreaking reminder that online threats are not abstract. They are real, they are evolving ...

House Bill 5536 would deregulate Michigan’s wetlands

To the Journal editor: Michigan House Bill 5536 could deregulate over one million acres of Michigan’s wetlands. Yes, you read that right. Introduced by state Rep. David Martin, R-Grand Blanc earlier this year, HB 5536 has passed the Michigan House of Representatives and now awaits consideration in the Senate Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee. HB 5536 would impose the federal government’s narrow interpretation of the Clean Water Act on Michigan’s wetlands, requiring that wetlands have a direct surface connection to federally-regulated “Waters of the United States” ...

Never forget 9/11

To the Journal editor: Like many Americans, I was devastated by the loss of nearly three thousand lives at the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. I was 17 that day and it felt like the world was ending. In many ways, it did. Our culture, security measures, our opinions on Islam and our very notion of who we were as a nation changed forever. Twenty-five years and two wars later, New York has a proud Muslim mayor and Abdul El-Sayed is a strong front runner for Senate in Michgan. As 42 year old me pondered the meaning of this amid increasingly hateful rhetoric, I ...

Which one sounds like us?

To the Journal editor: Everybody up here knows the drill. You come over a rise in a whiteout and there’s a car nose-down in the ditch. You stop. You pull them out, or you sit with them until somebody with a chain shows up. Nobody asks where they’re from. Nobody sends a bill. Next time it’s your car. They do the same thing at the Soo, across an international border. Sault Ste. Marie has been one town with a line through it since 1817. The two cities keep a fire mutual-aid agreement, renegotiated in 2023. Between 1998 and 2022, firefighters from the Canadian side crossed the bridge ...

What do you want from government?

To the Journal editor: “Project 2020” was often criticized by progressives as a blueprint for expanding executive power and reshaping federal institutions. Yet there is a striking inconsistency in that criticism: many of the same voices which denounced the document’s existence seem unwilling to acknowledge the absence of a comparably comprehensive, publicly debated governing blueprint from the modern left. If one side is condemned for explaining what it would do with power, why is the other side not held to the same standard? At its core, Project 2020 presented ideas associated ...

Terrorist attacks contemplated

To the Journal editor: As I attempt to comprehend the implications of the Sept. 11, terrorist attack on the United States, I wonder if this event will be remembered as the psychological beginning of the 21st century. The world for Americans changed with this tragic event. As we look back on the past two years, events that occurred before last Tuesday may seem more like a continuation of the optimistic and innocent 1990s than part of the harsher realities of the new century. At this point, it is too early to predict what will occur next. However, there are some questions that should be ...