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Safety paramount when recreating on ice

Columns

Every winter, it seems, a number of people fall through ice they thought was safe. That's what happened recently in Marquette's Lower Harbor when someone fell through ice while reportedly skating. Many experienced ice fisherman know that as a practical matter, “safe ice” is an oxymoron, or fundamental contradiction in terms. Any ice can give way, no matter the ambient temperature. Ice thickness and related safety is related to not only temperature but snow depth on the ice and water currents, to name just two influences. Because of that, the Minnesota Department of Natural ...

Does US still have a constitution?

Columns

Legal scholars have many lenses through which to examine the Constitution. Lawyers need to master about 150 Supreme Court decisions in order to have a sufficient understanding of the government. But most of what lawyers have studied is theory — how the Constitution is supposed to work, as ...

Will falling birth rates mean a more conservative world?

Columns

George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago — the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that despite an ...

Free, secure elections, 2026+: Promises made, promises kept?

Letters To The Editor

John Voelker’s Hornstein’s Boy sets forth this epigram: “In a democracy those most gifted to govern are all too frequently those least gifted in the dark arts of ever getting to govern.” It’s clear, Judge Voelker aka Robert Traver would be amazed and delighted to join in the 2026 250th celebration honoring those brave Americans who signed the Declaration of Independence. He would second every one of the 26 complaints against the King, establishing a new Nation whose bedrock is freedom and liberty for all. That freedom depends on assuring free, secure State-run elections in ...

Majority of the electorate may sit out midterms

Columns

By ERICK ERICKSON Syndicated columnist Speaking at The New York Times, their actually conservative columnist Ross Douthat said, “I want to tell you a secret. One that most conservatives on the internet don’t want you to know. A year into his second presidency, Donald Trump has lost the ...

Military strikes won't really help Iranian citizens

Editorial

The brutality of Iran’s crackdown on protesters is almost unfathomable. Despite the authorities cutting off communications and destroying evidence, it is clear that a regime never reluctant to shed its citizens’ blood has done so with unprecedented zeal, sensing an unprecedented threat from unrest across the country, challenging not only its policies but its very existence. Officials have reported 3,000 deaths, but human rights groups have tallied many more, and a network of medical professionals has estimated that 30,000 could have been killed. Security forces shot people dead as ...