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National Drug Take Back Day on Saturday

The Michigan State Police is once again taking part in a national initiative that encourages residents to properly dispose of expired, unused and unwanted prescription pills. All of MSP’s 31 posts will participate in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. This is one of two annual events held in partnership with the Drug Enforcement Administration and other police agencies, MSP advises in a news release. Nearly 650 pounds of pills were collected during the last Drug Take Back Day in October. “By taking a few minutes to clear out expired or unused ...

Food insecurity IS hunger

The late, great stand up artist George Carlin got it exactly right some years ago when he held forth on society's tendency to restructure verbal phraseology to make it easier on the ear, to render it less offensive, more comfortable. He famously offered several examples of this, including what happens to combat veterans after the fighting stops. In World War I, he said, the condition was called shell shock. Short, direct, it almost sounds like the guns themselves, he said. Since then, shell shock has evolved into something called post traumatic stress disorder. All of the pain, trauma, ...

State should step up on compulsive gambling

With the state of Michigan, according to its own records, raking in a veritable mountain of cash each year from legalized online gambling, it is not at all clear why Lansing isn't doing more to provide resources to deal with the inevitable result of all that betting: Compulsive gambling. According to a recent story from the authoritative Bridge Michigan that was reprinted by The Mining Journal, Michigan received a failing grade from an advocacy group for its efforts to protect gamblers. The state pulled in $624.6 million off online gambling last year, including $27.1 million in taxes ...

M-35 roundabout a good idea

Although we suspect this project may face some degree of opposition as the construction season opens, we like what the Michigan Department of Transportation is planning for more than three miles of M-35 in Marquette County between Marquette County Road 480 and US 41, including converting the M-35/County Road 492 intersection to a modern roundabout. Dan Weingarten, MDOT media representative for the agency’s Superior Region, summed things up nicely in a recent Mining Journal front page story on the matter, noting the current intersection of Marquette County Road 492 and M-35 is offset ...

Court rules federal government can’t ban at-home distilleries

Judges occasionally declare federal laws unconstitutional. But usually when a law passed by Congress has been on the books for more than 150 years, it’s in the clear. Not so for the federal ban on homemade whiskey, vodka and gin. Last week, an appeals court invalidated a federal law dating to 1868 that criminalizes at-home distilleries. The spirited ruling is a boon to small-time liquor hobbyists and entrepreneurs — but also an important statement on the limits of the federal government’s taxing power. Congress imposed the ban as a companion to legislation taxing alcohol and ...

County board correct on ‘people’s resolution’

A handful of sparks flew at the usually laid back, relatively speaking, Marquette County Board of Commissioners meeting earlier last week when the panel voted 3-2 in favor of a resolution entitled, "Resolution in Support of the People." This innocuous label obscured what the document was really about: keeping the federal government, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, out of Marquette County or, as an alternative, somehow compelling them to behave decently if ever they do show up here. Commissioners Karl Numinen, Dana LaLonde and Karen Alholm voted yes on the ...